Everything about Guildhall London totally explained
The
Guildhall is a building in the
City of London, off
Cheapside and
Basinghall Street, in the wards of
Bassishaw and
Cheap. It has been used as a town hall for several hundred years, and is still the ceremonial and administrative centre of the
City of London (which shouldn't be confused with
Greater London, of which it's only a very small part) and its
Corporation. The term Guildhall refers both to the whole building and to its main room, which is a medieval style
great hall similar to those at many
Oxbridge colleges. The Guildhall complex houses the offices of the
City of London Corporation and various public facilities. Greater London also has a
City Hall.
History
Roman, Saxon and Medieval
The great hall is believed to be on the site of an earlier Guildhall (one possible derivation for the word 'guildhall' is the Anglo-Saxon 'gild', meaning payment, with a "gild-hall" being where citizens would pay their taxes). During the
Roman period it was the site of an amphitheatre, the largest in
Britannia, partial remains of which are on public display in the basement of the
Guildhall Art Gallery and the outline of whose arena is marked with a black circle on the paving of the courtyard in front of the hall. Indeed, the siting of the Saxon Guildhall here was probably due to the amphitheatre's remains Certainly excavations by
MOLAS in 2000 at the entrance to Guildhall Yard exposed remains of the great 13th century gatehouse apparently built directly over the southern entrance to the Roman amphitheatre, which raises the possibility that enough of the Roman structure survived to influence the siting not only of the gatehouse and Guildhall itself, but also of the church of St Lawrence Jewry whose strange alignment may shadow the elliptical form of the amphitheatre beneath. The first documentary reference to a London Guildhall is dated 1128 and the current hall's west crypt may be part of a late-13th century building. Legendary British history made the Guildhall's site the site of the palace of
Brutus of Troy.
1441-present
Parts of the current building date from 1411 and it's the only stone building not belonging to the Church to have survived the
Great Fire of London in 1666. The complex contains several other historic interiors besides the hall, including the large mediaeval
crypts, the old library, and the print room, all of which are now used as function rooms.
Trials in this hall have included those of
Anne Askew (Protestant martyr),
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey,
Sir Nicholas Throckmorton,
Lady Jane Grey,
Guildford Dudley,
Thomas Cranmer,
Henry Peckham,
John Daniel,
John Felton (Catholic),
Roderigo Lopez,
Henry Garnet (in connection with the Gunpowder Plot),
Gervase Helwys (in connection with the
Overbury plot) and it contains memorials to
Pitt the Elder,
Pitt the Younger, Admiral
Lord Nelson, the
Duke of Wellington,
William Beckford and
Sir Winston Churchill. It also played a part in
Jack Cade's 1450 rebellion.
The Great Hall didn't completely escape damage in 1666, and was partially restored - with a flat roof - in 1670. The present grand entrance (the east wing of the south front), in
"Hindoostani Gothic", was added in 1788 by
George Dance (and restored in 1910). A more thorough restoration than that in 1670 was completed in 1866 by City of London
architect Sir
Horace Jones who added a new timber roof in close keeping with the original. Sadly, this replacement was destroyed during
The Second Great Fire of London on the night of 29th/30th December 1940, result of a Luftwaffe fire-raid. It was replaced in 1954 during works designed by Sir
Giles Gilbert Scott.
Present
The day-to-day administration of the
City of London Corporation is now conducted from modern buildings immediately to the north of the Guildhall, but the Guildhall itself, and the adjacent historic interiors, are still used for official functions, and it's open to the public during the annual
London Open House weekend. The
Guildhall Art Gallery was added to the complex in the 1990s. The
Clockmakers' Museum and the
Guildhall Library, a public reference library with specialist collections on London which include material from the 11th century onwards, are also housed in the complex.
Gog and Magog
Two giants,
Gog and Magog, are associated with the Guildhall. Legend has it that the two giants were defeated by
Brutus and chained to the gates of his palace on the site of Guildhall. Carvings of Gog and Magog are kept in the Guildhall and taken out and paraded in the annual
Lord Mayor's Show.
An early version of Gog and Magog were destroyed in the Guildhall during the Great Fire of London. They were replaced in 1708 by a large pair of wooden statues carved by Captain
Richard Saunders. These giants, on whom the current versions are based, lasted for over two hundred years before they were destroyed in
the Blitz. They in turn were replaced by a new pair carved by David Evans in 1953 and given to the City of London by
Alderman Sir
George Wilkinson, who had been
Lord Mayor in 1940 at the time of the destruction of the previous versions.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Guildhall London'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://guildhall__london.totallyexplained.com">Guildhall, London Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
