History of
Bakers’ Hall at Harp Lane
Before the acquisition of their freehold in Harp Lane, The Bakers Company
had three (known) halls. They were in Warwick Lane, Dowgate and Basing
Lane.
The Hall, described in a contemporary legal document as the ‘great
messuage… … with the great entrance’, was a magnificent medieval manor
house, purchased in December 1505 in the best part of the City, in the
centre of the thriving wine trade. The house is described in the minutest
detail in the Company’s minutes and the account book for the period
(1491-1548) where every penny lavished on the property is recorded as
described by an Elizabethan figure:
“The Hall stood back from the lane, ranged around a little paved
courtyard. It was part brick, part timbered plaster, with a tiled roof. A
tall gable faced the street to the south, a garden ran alongside to the
north, and a wing used as a warehouse screened the rest from Harp Lime.
One entered here through great gates on yellow posts with a hanging
lantern, and crossed the courtyard to a porch with a chamber above it,
jutting out over the door that led into the main assembly hall. This was a
spacious room with a gallery at the south end. The walls shone with
whitewash, the timber work and panelling were dark red and the chimney
piece gilt. Of the windows, barred with iron bars painted red, one, in the
gallery, was stained yellow and blazoned with the arms of the Company.
Rushes were strewn on the tiled floor, the high table at one end was
spread with a thick cloth, and there were other tables, painted, and
sideboards, benches draped with covers and padded with cushions,
footstools and iron dogs by the hearth. The panelled gallery was hung with
pieces of painted cloth and furnished with a trestle table and a long
settle.”
Beside the hall lay the garden, flanked by a white-washed wall. It had a
well-house, a bowling alley, a stone walk and benches for rest. A gardener
came in sometimes for eightpence a day to cut and train the grapevines,
and to tend the flowers - rosemary and thyme and eglantine.
John Chicheley was Chamberlain and had twenty-four children one of whom,
Lady Elizabeth Boughchier, inherited the property. It was from Lady
Elizabeth’s executors that the Bakers purchased the house, moving in after
the major refurbishment in April 1506.
1506 -
Celebrating 500 years in Harp Lane - 2006
