Clothworkers' Hall stands partly on a site granted between 1170 and 1197 by Prior Stephen of Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate to Alfred the tiler, or roofer. The property later belonged to the de Grey family, by whom it was conveyed to a group of individually-named Shearmen in 1456.
A Hall must have existed, or been built on the site, of which no physical description survives. When the Company of Shearmen merged with The Fullers' Company to form The Clothworkers' Company, this building became the Clothworkers' first Hall.
Little is known of the appearance of this earliest Hall, though a number of other Livery or Guild Halls survive elsewhere in Britain, to which comparisons may be made, for example those at Leicester and York.
An inventory of the items owned by the Shearmen and passed on to the new Company survives, which tells us something of the Hall's contents and arrangements.
The main Hall was evidently arranged with a dais at one end. The dais had a long painted table and two further tables ran down either side of the Hall. Seating took the form of long benches. The Hall also contained a hanging and a beam for five candlesticks.
Other rooms included an upper chamber, containing a long trestle table, two benches and a chest; a parlour, containing a trestle table and a hanging trimmed with red cloth, and a kitchen.
Second Hall >>