Architecture
The Livery Halls of the City of London Anya Lucas and Henry Russell (Merrell, £45)
London’s Livery halls are one of the capital’s mysteries. A few open their heavy doors to the public on open House weekend. The rest are the private domain of their membership— and of those lucky enough to be invited to attend a dinner. This handsome book, which has been published in association with the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects, takes us inside, on a sumptuous and rather intriguing survey.
Livery companies began in the 13th century as guilds, controlling certain trades and developing bonds of fellowship between their members. Company officials, called renter wardens and beadles, still wear fur-lined gowns modelled on Tudor apparel and elaborate rituals surround drinking from a ‘loving cup’. They flourish because they remain relevant as charitable bodies and their halls are some of the finest secular spaces in London.
The 110 companies range from the Mercers, number one in the proudly guarded pecking order, to the newest, the Worshipful Company of Arts scholars. Forty of the halls are covered here: 39 in the City or environs and one—a former 1934 royal Navy sloop housing the Master Mariners—moored on the Thames embankment.
The Great Fire of 1666 and the blitz of the second World War did for many of the buildings. Anya Lucas sets out eloquently how they evolved and rightly places emphasis on the postFire rebuilding, when the livery hall emerged as a distinct building type. some of the finest, such as the Apothecaries’, vintners’ and the skinners’, retain much of their stuart fabric.
often, it’s the portraits and possessions that provide the most interest—particularly so with the post-blitz reconstructions, some of which are bland echoes of former grandeur. other modern halls are rather good, such as basil spence’s salters’ Hall (1976).
The impact of some halls can be daunting. Fishmongers’ Hall is richly neo-classical. Philip Hardwick’s Goldsmiths’ Hall of 1835 was ‘marked by an air of palatial grandeur not exceeded by that of any other piece of interior architecture in London’. The drapers congregate in an equally huge victorian palazzo and the Cutlers opted for a rich Jacobean style with blaring elephants supporting the hammerbeamed hall roof.
With so much changed in the City, these halls, like Wren’s churches, provide precious links to a disappearing past. Roger Bowdler