The First Hall
In 1339 nineteen goldsmiths bought a property in Foster Lane for the use of the Goldsmiths' Company. Though extended in area, this is the identical site on which Goldsmiths' Hall stands today. No other Livery Company can claim a longer or earlier tenure.
The Goldsmiths' Company had received its first royal charter in 1327 recognising its already established position in the regulation of the standards of gold and silver wares, and the right to elect Wardens to enforce authority. It then took a bold step in deciding to set up a headquarters, its own 'common-place, an expensive and complicated business because at that time it was an unincorporated body. The chosen property lay near the 'Goldsmithery' or goldsmiths' area, at the north end of Foster Lane in the parish of St John Zachary. It had formerly belonged to Sir Nicholas de Segrave, brother of the Bishop of London, and in 1323 his executors had sold it to William de Clyf, clerk.
This property, purchased by the goldsmiths in 1339, was most probably an average-sized merchant's house of the day. This became the Company's assembly place. Before any additions or alterations could be made, the Company suffered two serious set-backs. First, the licence to hold property in mortmain, purchased in 1341, was found to be inadequate, and not until it obtained its new charter in 1393 was it legally allowed to acquire property. Second, bubonic plague, the dreaded Black Death, hit England for the first time in 1348 with tragic effect. Life in the City and the Company was almost brought to a standstill. The mortality figures are not known, but in that one year all four Wardens died, and for the next two years the Company records remain a complete blank.
The building must, therefore, have been unchanged for at least the next twenty years, and it was not until the late 1360s that regular mention is made to the Goldsmiths' common-place' in the parish of St John Zachary. Items of expenditure for it appeared regularly from then on in the Wardens' accounts and it was, at that time, described as 'un sale et quezine et pantri et botylerie et ii chambris.
According to John Stow's Survey of London, first published in 1598, a new building was erected in 1407 by Dru Barentyn, a leading member of the Company. No reference to this appears in the records, and it is now thought more likely that there was no new hall but that constant partial rebuilding with various additions was carried on. In 1382 the Company had boasted of the addition of a fine wainscotted parlour, where the Wardens could meet away from the rank and file of members, and also a cellar. By 1454 the parlour had been rebuilt in an even more lavish style, but the Wardens admitted being in financial difficulties over the general upkeep of the building. It was decided, for the first time, to levy quarterage, a payment of one shilling every quarter on all members of the Livery for a special fund for building and repairs.
From the accounts we can tell that by now the hall contained a parlour, great hall, chapel, chamber, granary, armoury and cellars with a courtyard or garden. The great hall, now called the Livery Hall, had a large bay window with armorial bearings, paid for by Sir Edmund Shaa and Thomas Wood, two wealthy benefactors of the Company. Its roof had been surmounted with a 'fumeral' (lantern) topped with a vane. The window-seats were covered with tapestry, and the various benches were provided with embroidered cushions. Leather fire buckets painted with the Company's arms, a wise precaution in a timber-framed building, were mentioned.
Although early legislation had instructed the Wardens testing gold and silver wares to ‘go from shop to shop among the goldsmiths to assay...’, there must have been some room in the Hall equipped with a furnace for making assays by the cupellation process. In 1478 a proper Assay Office was established in the building with a salaried official, Christopher Elyot, appointed to run it. The furnace was to be kept alight daily from eight o'clock in the morning until midday, and wares had to be brought to the Hall to be tested and marked. It is believed that the word 'hallmarking' originated at this time.
In 1530 the Company went to great trouble and expense to import a specially woven tapestry, from Flanders, which depicted the life of St Dunstan, the patron saint of English goldsmiths. Not only did this involve paying for the 'dyvysyng of the storye' but a further ten shillings was then required to translate it before the Flemish weavers could get to work. The very exact accounts of the entire transaction even include the payment of 2d. a day to a boy to sharpen the charcoal for the artist drawing out his design. Of vast size, the tapestry was hung all around the walls of the Livery Hall. Alas, with the advent of the Reformation, the life of this tapestry was very short. It disappeared, as did a jewel-encrusted silver-gilt effigy of St Dunstan, which at some unknown date had been erected over the screen in the Livery Hall, and a cup with the finial in the form of the saint. The latter were discreetly melted down in 1547 before they could be seized by the King's Commissioners. The Company's funeral pall, traditionally draped over the coffins of senior members, was embroidered over to disguise any 'superstitious' symbols.
This then is the Goldsmiths Hall of the sixteenth century described rather disparagingly by Stow as:
“a proper house, but not large: and therefore to say that Bartholomew Read, goldsmith, mayor in the year 1502, kept such a feast in this hall as some have fabuled, is far incredible and altogether unpossible, considering the smallness of the hall, and number of the guests, which, as they say, were more than a hundredth persons of great estate ... and therefore, I will over passe it”
By the early seventeenth century it was becoming obvious that a new building was a necessity even though it would cause a strain on the Company's already straitened financial position. After much argument as to the design, the Wardens finally agreed to accept the advice of Inigo Jones, Surveyor to the King, who recommended Nicholas Stone, head mason for the building of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall in 1619. There is some evidence that the resultant plan was a joint effort, and Inigo Jones was rewarded with the gift of a Spanish gold chain.