Playing with history

A post-Modern livery hall that is a striking home for an ancient company can teach us something about sensitive development in London.

- John Martin Robinson

Founders' Hall, Cloth Fair, London EC1

The Worshipful Company of Founders

FOUNDERS’ HALL, situated in Cloth Fair in the Smithfield Conservation Area, is less than 40 years old, but already has some of the character of an established historic building. Its elevations make an intended foil to the ancient structures surrounding it. As well as being the headquarters of a medieval livery company, the building also contains income-producing flats and commercial offices.

The Founders decided to move here from their previous Victorian home in St Swithin’s Lane (near the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street) and acquired the site at the east end of the venerable Norman church of St Bartholomew the Great in 1983. The new building was completed in 1986, the date being recorded in a cast-brass foundation roundel inset into the floor of the hall staircase, in a ceremony led by the Lord Mayor of London. That plaque was cast by a member of the Founders’, a City livery company that, as do the Goldsmiths’ and Fishmongers’, still retains close working links with its original craft, including all types of metal founding, especially brass and bells.

The new livery hall was designed by the late Sam Lloyd of London architectural firm Green Lloyd and Adams. He was the grandson of the distinguished Edwardian architect Curtis Green (whose masterpiece is now the Wolseley Restaurant, Piccadilly). The firm flourished for three generations and the Founders’ Hall is its swansong, as well as an example of the City’s astonishing knack of manifesting unbroken antiquity in modern dress.