Information about Guildhall, London

The Guildhall is a building in the City of London, off Cheapside and Basinghall Street, near Bank. It has been used as a town hall for several hundred years, and is still the ceremonial centre of the City of London (which should not be confused with Greater London, of which it is 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 Corporation of London 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 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^[1] 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.^[2] 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 is 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 did not 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 Corporation of London 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 is 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.

Notes

External links

• Corporation of London homepage on Guildhall

•  • [ e] Part of a of articles on the History of London
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