The virtues of history

One of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies is celebrating the centenary of its Tudor-style Hall. John Goodall looks at the remarkable story of the building.

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ON the bright Saturday morning of July 7, 1917, a formation of 22 German Gotha heavy bombers crossed the Channel and mounted the largest aerial attack London had ever experienced. It was the second air raid on the capital to employ planes rather than zeppelins and was undertaken ona clear day in broad daylight. There was as yet no system to warn the population of danger and most initially assumed the incoming planes were friendly. Even when the firing started, many were more curious than frightened and had to be ushered off the streets to shelter.

There were more than 170 casualties from the raid and among the properties damaged from across a wide area was Ironmongers' Hall on Fenchurch Street, EC3. The Hall in question stood on a site that had been home to the Ironmongers' Company—10th in precedence among the 'Great Twelve' of the City's Livery Companies—since 1457. A bomb that detonated in the courtyard of the building threw paving stones onto the roof and, in one room, dislodged all the plaster, yet left a glazed painting untouched on the wall. After much debate, the impoverished Company determined to sell the damaged building, encouraged by the value of the land, and took up temporary accommodation in the Wax Chandlers' Hall. There was an auction of surplus contents the following August and, late in 1919, Ironmongers' Halll was purchased by acoal merchant, who demolished it. The site for asuccessor on Shaftesbury Place, Aldersgate, EC2, was secured nearly three years later, in June 1922. Emphasis was given in press reports to the fact that the new plot of land, which stood just outside the Roman walls of the City, had been drained in the 17th century by a Master of the Ironmongers, linking it with the long history of the Company.