The Company
A short history of the Grocers’ Company
The Worshipful Company of Grocers, who today rank second of the Livery Companies of the City of London, was originally known as the Guild of Pepperers whose earliest records date back to 1180. The Pepperers were recognised as general traders, who bought and sold, or, according to the legal acceptation of the word, “engrossed” all kinds of merchandise, trading in spices, gold and other luxury goods from Byzantium and the Mediterranean and often using pepper as a form of currency (hence the ‘peppercorn’ rent). They were officially connected with the duty of weighing in the City, and they nominated the officer to have charge of the King’s Beam. This beam weighed by “peso grosso” the scale by which all heavy goods were weighed in the Port of London. In 1345 the Guild became the ‘Fraternity of Pepperers’ and 3 years later they officially adopted a new name becoming the ‘The Company of Grossers of London’, derived from a new and fashionable word in the English vocabulary ‘grosser’, referring to a particular type of merchant who traded in ‘all manner of merchandise vendible’. First reference to ‘The Grocers’ Company’ was made in the revised Ordinances in 1376.
In 1426 the Company was granted its first Charter by Henry VI and the members purchased a family mansion and garden in Old Jewry for £213 6s. 8d which became the site of the first Hall completed in 1428, and nearly 600 years later is the site of the Company’s fifth Hall in 2019.
The camel is a continuous thread that runs through the history of the Grocers’ Company. The Grocers’ camel is usually displayed facing west, travelling from the east along the spice route. The camel from medieval times, became the symbol of the spice trade, and by 1562 was a key motif on the Grocers’ Company Arms. The Grocers’ camels bear packs studded with cloves, which are another enduring symbol of the Grocers’ Company. The Company Arms displays nine cloves, showing that the Company identified itself primarily with spices from the Far East. Cloves were one of the most expensive of spices, reflecting their long journey from the Spice Islands and their extensive use in medicines. They symbolise wealth, standing and sophistication.
There is an apocryphal tale that the Grocers, who were once the first of The Great Twelve Livery Companies of London, were demoted to second place when, during a City procession, one of the Grocers’ Camels hired for the pageant, emitted unfortunate smells in front of Queen Elizabeth I.
On the night of 22nd September 1965, the Fourth Hall, built in 1890, was almost completely destroyed by fire. The fire, described as the largest in the City since the Blitz, was traced to an electrical fault under the grand staircase. The Company archives, plate, library, glass collection and wine cellar survived but most of the Company’s fine furniture, chandeliers, pictures and other artefacts perished. The Court decided to build its fifth Hall on the same site incorporating part of the surviving facade. It was re-opened in 1970.
In the twentieth century the Company, along with the other Livery Companies, continues to play its part in the daily life of the City and in the election of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and carries on the traditions of one of the ancient Fraternities who have, since the middle ages, formed sounding boards of informed responsible opinion. The Grocers’ Company has always given generously to charity, when its means allowed, but during the past three hundred years its charitable activities, including those related to education and the church, have been the principal justification for its continued existence. The generosity of past members, through gifts and bequests, and the growing income of its City properties has enabled the Company for many years to expand the scope of its own giving.
Thus, it will be seen that the Company hopes to continue to live up to the ideals expressed in its early Ordinances, that it should be a ‘nursery of charities and a seminary of good citizens’.
History & Origins of Grocers' Hall
Historical Highlights
Company Historian Dr Helen Clifford launches her new series ‘Historical Highlights’ targeting important anniversaries, forgotten Company connections across the country and hidden gems found in the archive - celebrating the rich and varied past of Grocers’ Company.
Historical Highlight No 8 - 'Found in a Family Archive'.
In February this year we received an enquiry about a cloth badge, described as roughly 3 inches square embroidered with gilt wire, bearing the arms of the Grocers’ Company. The enquirer mentioned that he had found it in his family archive and both his grandfathers had worked for Henry A. Lane & Co., provision importers in Tooley Street, London. His father, Jack Leonard Cole (1924-2007) had attended the Grocers’ Company School in Hackney from 1935, and was evacuated in September 1939 to King’s Lynn when the school moved to King Edward VII Grammar School.
Thanks to Greville Bibby our Clerk, who forwarded the message to Glyndwr Watkins, we were able to confirm that the form of the badge indicated its parentage as ‘By Clove Club out of Grocers’ Company’. According to Geoffrey Alderman in his Hackney Downs 1876-1995 (2012), The Clove Club owed its existence to the Rev. Charles George Gull who became Headmaster of the Grocers’ School in Hackney Downs in 1882 (to 1902). In his first report to the Governors argued the case for an Old Boys’ Club for which he hoped the Grocers’ Company would provide ‘a suitable shed’. So it was that the Clove Club (the title derived from the cloves on the Company’s coat of arms) was born.
Its inaugural meeting was held on 27 September 1884. The first dinner was held at Grocers’ Hall in 1897, when the membership was 200. The Grocers’ Company School, established by the Company in 1876 was renamed Hackney Downs School in 1906 on its transfer to the London County Council. The Clove Club ceased to exist in 1986 but was revived in 1995. Mr Watkins, who currently runs the Clove Club, explained that during the inter-war years there was an agreement with a company in the West End (no longer functioning) who produced ties and such like for The Clove Club, and this is the most likely source of the badge.
Much later, with the permission of the Company, the Club did commission blazer badges, but these were generally of the full coat of arms, were few in number and discontinued when the Company folded up in the 1960s. Our enquirer, on receipt of the information on the badge, commented ‘that in his younger days’ his father was ‘very much into clubs and the like. He joined the scouts, was in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and stayed for twelve years, he joined the Ancient Order of Druids, so it seems highly likely he would have joined the Clove Club’.
The fact that the badge was rescued from its backing and kept suggests that it had a special place in the owner’s affections. With thanks to Richard Cole for the enquiry, photograph of the badge and the family history details. The Company is proud to have resumed its links with the school, when it was reborn as Mossbourne Community Academy, in 2004.
Historical Highlight No 7 - 'A Grocer's Staycation'
Did you know that Grocer William Taylour (1406-1483) [also spelt Taillor, Taillour and Taylor], who was Lord Mayor of London in 1468/9, built himself a fine home in Edenbridge, Kent, the town of his birth, in the year of his Mayoralty? What is more the house still stands on the east side of the High Street and is known as Taylour House. Listed in 1954 it is described as a fifteenth century timber-framed building which has been much altered externally, with a seventeenth century chimney stack and first floor modern mullioned windows. In the spandrels of the carved oak doorway are the arms of Sir William Taylour on the right and that of the Grocers’ Company on the left. It is said that it had the proportions and ceiling heights (12 foot) of a 'fine London house'.
It is possible to look round the house, even during lockdown, as it is a now a holiday let: https://www.homeaway.co.uk/p1929387. Later known as ‘The Griffin’ inn it has a Jacobean staircase and a number of early seventeenth century wall paintings, including a scene depicting Judith and Holofernes.
William Taylour was a Sherriff of London in 1455, an Alderman in 1458, as well as Lord Mayor in 1468/9. By the way, it was only in 2006 that the title ‘Lord Mayor of the City of London’ was devised, for the most part, to avoid confusion with the office of Mayor of London. Taylour went on to be knighted in 1471, and was appointed Master of the Grocers’ Company in 1475 and again in 1483, when he was also elected one of the two aldermanic representatives for the City of London. If there are any Grocers who live near Edenbridge we would love some detailed photographs of the Taylour and Company arms please.
Historical Highlight No 7 - 'Grocers in Transit'
Company Historian, Dr Helen Clifford, recently came across an old archive enquiry that intrigued me. In 2016 a Mr Keeler contacted Grocers’ Hall explaining that he had bought a car about thirty five years previously which had a number of badges attached to it. One incorporated the Grocers’ Company coat of arms, with the chevron and nine cloves, and motto. It was stamped ‘BEAULAH’, and he sent a photograph of it. Did we, he asked, know anything more about the badge?
A search in the Company records by Mrs Pauline Sidell the archivist yielded nothing, while the Beadle contacted the manufacturer G.K. Beaulah, still in operation since its foundation in the 1930s, about the cost of acquiring new ones, clearly with a thought to current Members of the Company. The die for the badge still existed, and a batch of five could be supplied for £25.80 plus postage. Mrs Sidell suggested that if Mr Keeler had the log book, she might be able to see if a member of the Company had owned it. Frustratingly the correspondence then ended, which seemed odd. Five years on the enquiry has been revived. Amazingly Mr Keeler’s response to the question, ‘did he still have the badge and had he learnt more about it?’ was rapid. He explained that the badge had been on a Range Rover that he had purchased at an auction in 1980, previously registered somewhere in Scotland. He could not recall the registration number, and he had sold the car when he went to live in France in 1982. So that explained why possible leads from a log book had not been followed up. At this point he added that he had removed the badge which he left in storage until he came across it in 2016 when he was having a clear out. He must have contacted the Company just before he put it on Ebay to sell it. Did a Grocer buy it?
So, back to Beaulah. Dr Clifford asked if they could tell me when the die for the badge had been made, was it possible to say for who, and how many had been sold to date? They replied that they still had the die, the price each per batch of five would now be £29.25 each plus carriage. The record number suggested that the die was made sometime in the 1980s, so the badge on Mr Keeler’s car was quite new, although no information survives about the name of the purchaser. At least ten to twenty must have been made for a die to have been created. So now the hunt is on for the other badges, please come forward if you have any information!
Historical Highlight No 8 - 'A Taxing Issue for some Honorary Freemen'
The new tax year looms, and with it we should remember some famous Honorary Grocers, not least William Pitt the Younger. As John Jeffrey-Cook has noted Pitt ‘had a superb grasp of finance, when most MPs could barely count’. Pitt, made Honorary Freeman in 1784, is famed for many things, not least for his taxes. Influenced by the economic thinker Adam Smith, who advocated avoiding taxes on necessities and the poor, he introduced a range of new taxes targeted on the wealthy, including pleasure horses, including racehorses, but not working horses. In 1785 he added females to the servant tax, and made it progressive, the more servants you had the more you paid per servant. Then there were taxes on carriages and houses.
The escalating costs of war against revolutionary France from 1793 however demanded unprecedented borrowing. In response Pitt introduced a whole new range of inventive taxes. In 1793 on armorial bearings, which raised £45,000 in its first year. Then there was the tax on hair powder for wigs, which contributed to their demise. The first Income Tax, introduced in Pitt’s December 1798 budget, was, like the servant tax, progressive, that is graduated. All annual incomes over £200 were taxed at 10 per cent, while those between £60 and £200 were taxed at a graduated rate from just under one per cent to 10 per cent. No one was taxed on incomes below £60. Though decried as intrusive, the advance of Napoleon made payment a patriotic duty, and the funds raised from Income Tax were used to buy weapons and equipment. Pitt hoped that his tax would raise £10 million, but actual receipts for 1799 totalled just over £6 million.
Though Income Tax was abolished by Henry Addington, who replaced Pitt as Prime Minister, in 1802 (you might remember the phrase from school ‘Pitt is to Addington, as London is to Paddington’), renewed hostilities with France in 1803 heralded its return. It stayed until 1816, one year after Napoleon had been defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. Many believed Income Tax should only be used to finance wars. However, in 1842 Sir Robert Peel, made Honorary Grocer in 1824, reintroduced Income Tax as a temporary emergency measure, which he thought would be repealed within five years, after trade had improved. It was the first imposition of income tax in Britain outside of wartime. In 1858 Benjamin Disraeli, (made Honorary Grocer in 1879) declared Income Tax as ‘unjust, unequal and inquisitorial’ and that it should only ‘continue for a limited time on the distinct understanding that it should ultimately be repealed’. However, the rate at which it was applied (less than 1%) and with most of the population exempt, it was not a priority, and it has remained ever since.
Our last Grocer to feature in our story of taxation is Margaret Thatcher, who became an Honorary Freeman in 1980. She favoured indirect taxation, reducing personal income tax rates during the 1980s. In the first budget after her election victory in 1979, the top rate was reduced from 83% to 60% and the basic rate from 33% to 30%. The basic rate was also cut for three successive budgets – to 29% in the 1986 budget, 27% in 1987 and to 25% in 1988. The top rate of income tax was cut to 40% in the 1988 budget.
So, when you next pay your Income Tax, give a thought to the Grocers involved in its evolution.
With thanks to the Beadle for drawing our attention to the subject. For more see John Jeffrey-Cook’s talk ‘William Pitt and his Taxes’, 16 February 2009 to the Tax History Group of the Tax Advisers’ Livery Company, see:
Historical Highlight No 7 - 'On the trail of William Hartnup, Grocer of Hailsham in East Sussex'
In October 2020, Emily Cruse contacted the Company about the seventeenth century trade tokens, in the form of brass farthings, issued by William Hartnup that bear the Grocers’ Company arms on the obverse and the initials H above W and E within a border HAILSHAM SUSSEX on the reverse. She owns one herself, another is in her local Museum in Hailsham in East Sussex, and another is in the British Museum, stimulating her to write an article on them for the Hailsham Local History Society.
Over the years the Company has received several enquiries about such tokens, issued as Emily notes, ‘between 1648 and 1673 in response to a lack of low denomination coinage’, with no King on the throne there was no King’s Prerogative relating to coining money, so no-one ‘could be charged from breaking a law that was no longer valid’. As a result tokens became very popular. Past correspondence in the archive reveals the Company’s arms on tokens issued by Robert Lund (possibly Lynd) in Skipton, Yorkshire in 1666, Anne Greave in Gamlingay, Cambridgeshire in 1670, and undated examples relating to Henry Chitty (or Chittin) in Godalming, Surrey and John and Nathaniel Bayly in Marlborough, Wiltshire. Emily has discovered nearly 200 other tokens that have been recorded bearing the names of issuers, their place of origin and some indication of the trade or professions they followed.
Emily was interested to know whether the Grocers’ Arms on the Hartnup token indicated membership of the Company. In this case, very unusually, it does. We know that ‘William Hartnapp, son of William of Goudhurst, Kent, yeoman, was apprenticed to Thomas Burne on 12th March 1655/6’. The issuers of most tokens bearing the Company’s arms had no relationship with the Company, merely using the arms to give added status to their grocery business. Though technically permission from the Company was required for the use of its arms, it appears to have overlooked the practice. No instances appear in the records that indicate users were taken to task. Thanks to Emily’s research and her generosity in sharing her discoveries, we know a bit more about Mr Hartnup. He died, only twelve years after gaining his Freedom, on 17th September 1675 having written his last will and testament a mere 10 days previously, indicating perhaps a sudden illness. He signed his will not with a signature, but with his mark, a rather wobbly’W’. This was not, as Emily comments, because he was illiterate, but possibly because of his frailty. He left to Elizabeth his wife (who was to die three months after her husband, and whose initial ‘E’ appears with his on the token) his ‘rooms and furnishings’, to Matthew his brother, monies with requirement to pay an income to their mother, to his daughter Elizabeth monies owed to her upon the age of 21. His uncles Thomas Matthew and Thomas Wilson were his Executors. A son, Thomas, had died three years earlier. William is buried in St Mary’s Churchyard at Hailsham. Emily has kindly sent us both her full article and the shorter version published in the Hailsham Historical & Natural History Society Newsletter which has been added to our ever expanding file on Grocers’ Company tokens. It has been a fruitful research collaboration and a mutually beneficial means of shedding a little more light of the life of a forgotten Grocer.
Photograph courtesy of Emily Cruse
Historical Highlight No 6 - 'The Pitt Portrait - A Tale of Cumulative Copies'
The Grocers’ Company has always been proud of its association with William Pitt the Younger, who became an Honorary Freeman in 1784 following in the footsteps of his father the 1st Earl of Chatham. Pitt died on 23rd January 1806. Four months later, on 18th May, the Grocers’ Court Minutes record that ‘A Motion was … made and seconded that a Picture of the late Right Honourable William Pitt should be purchased for the Company and upon the Question being put, it was carried unanimously in the affirmative’. On 19th February 1807, the Company ‘Paid [160 guineas to] Mr Hoppner for a Painting of the late Right Honourable William Pitt’ plus £36 10s for the frame. The portrait was destroyed in the fire at Grocers’ Hall in 1965. So what did this portrait look like? The 1930 catalogue of The Principal Objects of Interest at Grocers’ Hall gives no indication.
An invitation from Grocer Henry Knapman to view a portrait of William Pitt now hanging in H.M. Treasury stimulated a drawing together of information relating to the Company’s lost portrait. The full length portrait shows Pitt with his right hand resting on a table touching a letter. The gilt label reads ‘From the portrait by John Hoppner at Grocers’ Hall, destroyed in the fire of 1965’. It had been commissioned from the artist William Alfred Menzies and was ‘presented by William Lockett Agnew to Herbert Asquith for 10 Downing Street, 1910’ and can be viewed here. The Grocers’ Company had also given permission for an earlier copy three years previously. In the Court Minutes for 3rd July 1907, we learn that ‘the Carlton Club [requested] to make a copy of the Hoppner Portrait of William Pitt’ and Mr Dent recommended that the Company ‘agreed on condition that there is acknowledgment that the original is at Grocers’ Hall. I contacted the Club and it is indeed still there, and hangs in Wellington Dining Room. Operations Manager Chris Hever added that the copy was made by Dorofield Hardy and has been recently restored. A black and white photograph of the Grocers’ Pitt portrait lies hidden in W.W. Grantham’s scrapbook of his year as Master 1906-1907, when the Carlton Club version was made.
So now we know what the Grocers’ portrait looked like, but what was the original source for this painting? Was it Hoppner’s portrait commissioned by Henry Phipps, 1st Lord Mulgrave and begun in December 1804, which became the centre of a thriving market for reproductions? A letter from Mulgrave’s son, Lord Normanby reveals that ‘It had not been sent home when Pitt died (George Clint had been engraving it). Then came applications from the most intimate friends of the deceased statesman for copies. All those made before the original was sent home were by express permission of Lord Mulgrave. After that I know copies of copies were multiplied to any that wished them’. The portrait was then exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1806, and sold in the Burdett-Coutts sale by Christie’s in 1922, when it went to Cowdray Park, where it still hangs. Thanks to Grocer James Roundell’s links with the art world we were able to ascertain that the Grocers’ Company portrait was not an exact copy, but a less common version.
The Cowdray original shows Pitt with his right hand touching his black and gold Treasury robes. A three-quarter version of the latter can also be seen in the Government Art Collection, seen here. Rather amusingly the caption in the online catalogue asserts that the original Pitt portrait, commissioned by Mulgrave ‘hung in the Grocers’ Hall (of the Grocers’ livery company) in the City of London, but was destroyed when fire spread through the building in 1965’. Thankfully not true! The Grocer version shows Pitt with his right hand on a table touching a letter (I wonder if it was a significant one?). To add to the confusion of copies engravings of both versions were made by George Clint. An engraving of the Grocers’ version was also made by Thomas Bragg and published in 1810, ‘From the picture in the possession of the Duke of Cumberland’ seen here.
It is still unclear however who painted the Grocers’ portrait, despite the fact that the Company dealt directly with Hoppner. Demand was great for copies. While the Russian Ambassador offered ‘any money provided it be executed by Hoppner’s own hand’ in March 1806, R. R. Reinagle painted 4 whole-lengths, taking 20 guineas each while Hoppner himself took 80 guineas, while Samuel Lane was at work on copies of Pitt early in 1807. As Henry Knapman suggested, perhaps the Company should commission a copy of the copy of the copy?
Historical Highlight No 5 - Tokens of Esteem?
There is a small brown box in the Company vault which contains rather dull looking coins. On closer inspection some of them are a puzzle. They look like coins but do not bear a monarch’s head, and stranger still they bear imagery connected with the Grocers’ Company. One, in particular, catches the eye. On the obverse are the arms of Westminster and London, and the inscription tells us that it was minted in 1797 as a penny. On the reverse there is a profile of the Company’s Second Hall which had arisen from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1666 and the Company’s arms. This design caught the attention of Michelle Molyneux our Charity Manager who spotted an example on the British Museum’s online catalogue (see https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_T-6251). Her eye has been well trained by her maternal grandfather who was a keen numismatist. So, the time seemed ripe for further investigation.
The British Museum online catalogue does not add to the information given above. We know that when George III discontinued the manufacture of copper coins in 1775, the resulting shortage of official copper coinage needed for small change was met from 1787 to 1797 with private issues of half penny and penny tokens which were readily accepted as unofficial coins. There is nothing in the surviving records of the Company that relate to the manufacture or circulation of such tokens, which were not regulated and were a good method of advertising. The Company does not seem to have ever challenged the use of its arms and imagery in this way. Such tokens were also common in the second half of the seventeenth century, but that is another story. So, is this copper coin one of these trade tokens? Correspondence undertaken soon after its purchase by the Company in 2009, initiated by Pauline Sidell, reveals a further twist in the story. According to the coin dealer Philip Mernick it is part of a series of 53 ‘medalets’ featuring prominent London buildings. Issued by the token manufacturer Peter Skidmore, who had a foundry in Clerkenwell and a shop in High Holborn, they are all dated 1797 and made for collectors rather than for use, hence their good condition. They are considered to be rare as the dies, by James Birmingham, did not last long. However, the greatest puzzle is the wording below the outline of the Hall ‘FOUNDED AD 1411’. But, to what does the date actually refer? The earliest written reference to the Pepperers, who became the Grocers, is in 1180, the Fraternity of Pepperers was founded in 1345, the foundation stone of the first Grocers’ Hall was laid in 1427, and the Company’s first Charter was granted in 1428. Where does 1411 fit? Ironically 1411 marked a low point for the Company, when a petition was presented to parliament by the Commons complaining of the high price of pepper which had quadrupled that year. The petitioners accused the grocers of hoarding it in order to force the price up, and the Lord Mayor, Thomas Knolles, as a Grocer was implicated as well as the Company. So does the date represent a mistake, a rather grim joke, or a key date yet to be understood? As an end note, the Hall that is celebrated on the medalet partially collapsed in 1798, the year after the commemorative ‘coin’ was issued, and by 1800 it was in the process of demolition. From such small things larger histories emerge.
Historical Highlight No 4 - Gathering Company cloves in Norfolk
If you happen to be in north Norfolk a visit to St Mary’s Church at Wiveton two miles inland from the coast, between Wells and Sheringham, is recommended. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, at the time of the area’s greatest prosperity when it was one of the major seaports in the east of England. Before the harbour silted up in the seventeenth century it once saw the import and export of goods such as wool, grain, malt, fish, spices, coal, cloth, wheat, barley and oats. In the south aisle of St Mary’s there is a memorial to Grocer Raulf Greneway (c.1500-1558). A white marble plaque is set with brass inserts: Greneway’s arms at the centre, flanked by those of the Grocers’ Company bearing nine cloves to the left and Greneway’s merchant’s mark in a quatrefoil to the right.
Below them is a plaque indicating the local philanthropy of ‘Citizen and Alderman of London’ Greneway. In the tradition of many a man made good Greneway is supposed to have been a foundling, some say abandoned by the green way of Stony Hill in Wiveton. He left for London where he was apprenticed to a Grocer and duly made his fortune. He married well, his second wife was the daughter of the French-born apothecary who accompanied Catherine of Aragon to England in 1501 and remained in her service until her death in 1536. His wife Katherine’s brother acted as his agent in Spain. Greneway was elected an Alderman in 1556, and had been made a Warden of the Grocers’ Company in 1555 becoming Master in 1557. In his will, proved on 3rd May 1558 which provided for his burial at St Dunstan in the East, he remembered the people of Wiveton. Recorded on his memorial brass is the wording of his will whereby he left funds so that ‘Every Sunday, before noon, for ever … 13d in money and 13d in bread’ be provided to each of thirteen needy parishioners. The charity exists to this day providing pensions and fuel grants. Incidentally his widow went on to marry another wealthy Grocer, Sir John White (d.1573) who had been Master of the Company in 1555, and Lord Mayor on 1563. Before you leave the area it is worth looking at St Margaret’s Church, Cley-next-the Sea, just across the River Glaven from Wiveton. Here you will find another Greneway, this time John. Six stalls with misericords of c.1530 are carved with a merchant’s mark with JG impaling the Grocers’ Company arms with the nine cloves. This may refer to Raulf’s brother John, both were sons of John Greneway of Wiveton who had died in 1515.
Dr Clifford would welcome the help of any member who finds themselves in north Norfolk. She is keen to receive a good quality picture of Grocer Raulf Greneway’s white marble plaque in the St Mary’s Church, Wiveton.
Historical Highlight No 3 - A Grocer Camel Spotted in Oxford …
This series of historical highlights concentrates on objects connected with the Grocers’ Company and its Members across the country, a sort of Grocer safari. The word ‘safari’ is defined as ‘an expedition to observe or hunt animals in their natural habitat’, in this case we will be hunting mostly camels, and their natural habitat, in this hunt, is somewhat esoteric. The camel in the stained glass window illustrated here can be found in Oxford, in the Museum of the History of Science on Broad Street. It greets the visitor who steps through the ground floor room and looks up the main staircase.
No-one could tell me why it was there, so the hunt was on to fund out. The answer was swiftly found in the Grocers’ Company Court Minutes of 25th May 1938. A note refers to an invitation from the curator of the Museum to the Master and Wardens to attend the unveiling of the window in Oxford. Sadly no-one was free to attend. The Grocers (along with the Mercers and Merchant Taylors) had given money towards the alteration of the Museum, which in 1935 became what was called the Museum of the History of Science. The building had begun its life in 1683 as the world’s first purpose-built public museum open to the public, created to house the collection of Elias Ashmole. In 1894 the growing collection was moved to Beaumont Street, into what is now known as The Ashmolean. In 1924 the History of Science Museum was founded in the old building, based on the scientific instrument collection of Lewis Evans, although not yet officially known by that name. The connection of the Grocers with this collection is particularly appropriate, although forgotten by the 1930s, as the Company attracted to its membership some the earliest and most inventive and entrepreneurial of scientific instrument makers, including the pioneering Augustine Ryther (d.1593). Some of his instruments are included in the displays in the History of Science Museum in Oxford, alongside examples made by other members of the dynasty of makers he founded. You can see a pocket sundial made by Ryther in 1585 here or Charles Whitwell’s equinoctial volvelle of 1606, part of Lewis Evans’s original collection, here. Unfortunately on the Virtual Tour of the Museum the window that contains the Grocers’ Company arms has been shuttered.
Historical Highlight No 2 - Eating, Drinking and an Epidemic, the Mysterious Case of the Russian Tankard
Eating, Drinking & an Epidemic, the Mysterious Case of the Russian Tankard There is a large silver-gilt tankard in the Grocers’ Company Collection that is rarely seen outside the strong room. The seventeenth-century style circular body is decorated with elaborate arabesques and inlaid with contrasting black niello work. The upper rim of the circular body bears the inscription in Cyrillic ‘Our forefathers ate simply but lived on the earth to about a hundred years’. Below is a finely engraved cartouche of peasants dancing watched by a man seated at a table drinking. The form, decoration and inscription imply that it is Russian, confirmed by the 1873 assay mark for Moscow. By the later seventeenth century Moscow was the undisputed centre of niello production. The Cyrillic quotation appears on other Russian silver, for example on a drinking cup belonging to the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanova (1822 -1892).
The hinged and domed lid bears on top a central boss engraved with the Grocers’ Company arms. But what connects Russia and the Company? Members had certainly been central in the founding the first of the joint-stock company, the Muscovy Company in 1555. However an inscription inside the lid tells us that the tankard was ‘Presented by Lady Dimsdale’ to the Company in 1913. Her husband Sir Joseph Cockfield Dimsdale (1849-1912) had been Master of the Grocers’ Company in 1885, and Lord Mayor in 1901-2, the first Grocer to be elected since 1791. After Dimsdale’s death his widow Beatrice gave this tankard to the Company. It seems likely that it may have been one of the many gifts he received during his Mayoralty during which he carried the crystal sceptre at the coronation of Edward VII. Dimsdale had a very personal connection with Russia. The daughter of Sir Joseph’s great grandfather married her cousin Thomas Dimsdale (1712-1800) who was a surgeon. After publishing a medical treatise on the devastating disease of smallpox in 1766, he innoculated the Empress Catherine II and her son Grand Duke Paul I, at a moment when a severe epidemic was sweeping through Russia. Although Thomas declined to become her doctor, returning to England to become a banker, he received a handsome annuity of £500, a gift of £10,000, travelling expenses of £2,000 and the rank of Baron of the Russian Empire. The Dimsdale gift encapsulates the global reach of the Company and its members and the intricate web of historical connections that in this case link London and Moscow, frugality and feasting, as well as the more topical subject of epidemics and innoculation.
Historical Highlight No 1 - Fire at Grocers Hall 1965
No less than 82 fire engines arrived at the scene, and within just two hours over 150 firefighters, four of whom were injured, brought the blaze under control. Only the damaged North Wing was left standing. Access to it was gained by members of the Hall staff shortly after 9 pm, when it was confirmed that the strong rooms were intact, and that the collection of glass in the Library was safe, but the Company’s charters had been burnt and the pictures in the Livery Hall, Court Room and Drawing Room were either lost or so badly damaged as to be irretrievable. Described as one of the largest fires in the City since the Blitz by the New York Times, the conflagration was caught on film by Reuters. Forensic specialists from Scotland Yard, in consultation with the Fire Prevention Officer of the City Corporation, were able to state with confidence that the fire began ‘in the cupboard under the half landing of the main staircase’ and had probably been caused by an electrical fault. The Court met at Mercers’ Hall the following morning to take stock, and acknowledged ‘the early receipt of a telegram from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’ which was read to the Court and received with heartfelt gratitude’.
This link to the London Fire Brigade Instagram page shows firefighters tackling the blaze from the roof of Grocers' Hall that day.
The design above is for part of the Fourth Hall by the Company’s Surveyor, Henry Cowell Boyes, dated 1887. It was approved by the Court, and is the version signed by the builders Cubitts, dated 1889. It shows Grocers' Hall as it was before the fire that destroyed the south and central wings in 1965.
Fascinating Facts
Our Company Historian and author of 'From Grossers to Grocers', Dr Helen Clifford is researching the second volume of the Company history. Over the coming weeks we will be sharing some of the fascinating facts that have come to her attention during the course of her research.
Fascinating Fact No 11 - The Grocers' Company Barge
The River Thames was until the middle of the nineteenth century a main thoroughfare of London. From the fifteenth century water-borne pageantry was an important part of London life. The first reference to a barge in the Grocers’ Company archives appears in 1436, when one was hired. It was not until 1637 that the Company decided to purchase its own. Livery company barges were the Rolls-Royces of their time, and powerful symbols of status and prestige. They certainly had hard use. The barge bought in 1637 had to be repaired in 1640 and again in 1653, and was replaced with a new one in 1662.
Another barge was completely rebuilt in 1760.Although there are many paintings featuring the pageantry on the Thames, and especially that connected with the Lord Mayor’s Show, it is difficult to ascribe with certainty any barge depicted in them to the Grocers. A discovery of two designs for a Grocers’ Company barge in the archives of the Goldsmiths’ Company is therefore of great excitement. Although undated they must surely relate to the decommissioning of the Grocers’ barge in 1806, when the Company had to decline the invitation to join Lord Nelson’s funeral procession, when his body was taken from Greenwich up the Thames to Whitehall, on January 8, as the barge was out of action. From draft estimates and contracts that survive, and dated 1805, we know that the Grocers were debating whether to commission an entirely new barge or rebuild and refurbish the old. At £1,880 for the former, and £1,150 for the latter the Grocers chose the cheaper option. The designs probably relate to the discussions the Company had with Richard Roberts barge builder of Lambeth who oversaw the work of joiners, carpenters, carvers and painters. A contract was drawn up between the Company and Rogers on 12th December 1805, promising the completion of refurbishment by 15 July 1807. By 1843 this barge ‘was condemned as unfit for use’, the Wardens engaging a steam boat for the next Lord Mayor’s Day. It was sold two years later. The last river procession was held in 1856, ending some four hundred years of tradition.
Fascinating Fact No 10 - Chaplets, Garlands or Crowns?
The ceremony of crowning the new Wardens takes place at Company’s Election Feast every year. It is a custom common to the Livery Companies, but the earliest reference to the ‘crowns’ appear in the first Ordinances of the Pepperers of 1345, when it was directed (in Norman French) that ‘the Wardens … shall come with chaplets [‘chapeletz’] and shall choose other two Wardens for the year ensuing upon whom the said chaplets shall be placed’.
The word ‘chaplet’ comes from the fourteenth century Old French ‘chapelet’ meaning garland of roses, which in turn goes back to the Roman use of garlands used to crown victors, as described by Pliny. By 1561 the ‘chaplets’ have become ‘garlands’, described in the Court Minutes for that year, when the ‘iii wardens shall come forth in to the Hall with iii garlands on their heads and the leader to bear in his hands a garland of flowers or such other garland as shall be appointed’. Perhaps the shift from ‘chaplet’ to ‘garland’ reflects the adoption of classical ideas in the Renaissance? The term ‘garland’ is also used by the Carpenters and Broderers, who still have their sixteenth century examples. In an article by J.L. Nevinson on ‘Crowns and Garlands of the Livery Companies’ in Guildhall Studies in London History, April 1974, the author states that ‘the Grocers’ Crowns no longer exist’. They survived until at least 1950 when they appear in the ‘Blue Book’, a list of ‘principal objects of interest’ belonging to the Company, first published in 1936. Perhaps they were lost in the fire of 1965? The ‘chaplets’ used today are modern, following the common form of a red velvet band, and embroidered with the Company arms granted in 1532 and the camel crest granted in 1562. A watercolour of an earlier model, painted in 1852 by Thomas Coleman Dibdin, shows that they were embellished with a completely different design of embroidered rays, perhaps like those decorating the Company’s gowns described as ‘rayed’ with embroidery in 1403, and reflecting an earlier ‘lost’ motif of the Company?
Fascinating Fact No 9 - Anyone for Tennis? Cups, Copies and Complications
A note in the Grocers’ Company Court Minutes for 1922 aroused my curiosity. It refers to a letter from an ‘H. A. Gwynne’, in response to which the ‘Court agreed to allow a copy of the Saunders Cup to remade as a presentation gift by the Countess Bathurst for the International Tennis’. The Bathurst Cup, which is awarded for international amateur real tennis and the sport's equivalent of the Davis Cup, was presented for the first time by Lilias, Countess Bathurst (1871 – 1965) in 1922.
She was the only daughter of Algernon Borthwick, 1st Baron Glenesk, owner of The Daily Telegraph and had married Seymour Henry Bathurst, 7th Earl Bathurst, (1864 – 1943) in 1893.
Her younger brother’s early death meant that she inherited the The Morning Post, whose editor from 1911, was Howell Arthur Gwynne (1865-1950).
The original Saunders Cup was made to commemorate John Saunders (1594-1669) who had been Warden of the Grocers’Company in 1645. In 1670 his son Thomas ‘came to Court and presented a fair large cup and cover of silver … as a gift of his father … lately deceased’. Two years later a cup of almost identical design was made to commemorate Penynge Alston (1606-1668) Warden of the Grocers’ Company in 1662, although complications with his bequest meant that it was only made in 1672. In 1764 the well-used and worn Saunders Cup, described as ‘useless’ was melted down and remade to the same design, with the original inscription engraved on it. Though the Alston cup is lauded as one of the ‘antiquities’ of the Company, it was the 1764 copy of the original Saunders Cup that was electrotyped (reproduced in base metal) in 1879, an example of which is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The hallmark, copied in the process of electrotyping, is incorrectly given in the catalogue as 1666.
So the question that still needs to be answered is why did Gwynne approach the Grocers on behalf of the Bathursts, and how did they know about the Saunders Cup? Any ideas?
You can see last year’s winners of the Bathurst Cup, at https://www.tennisandrackets.com/news/bathurst-cup-2019
Ed Kay at the centre holds the smaller copy of the Grocers’ Company cup; and the electrotype of the Saunders Cup at the V&A at: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O95052/covered-cup-unknown/
The picture shows: The Saunders Cup, supplied by the silversmith William Grundy, London, 1764
Thanks to Oliver Wise, Master Grocer 2016-2017, who played real tennis for many years and responded to this post, we can add a footnote to this article. He tells us that the Bathurst Cup is being researched by Roger Pilgrim, from the MCC, who has published two short articles on the Cup in the MCC Tennis and Squash Newsletter, November 2020 and January 2021. In them Roger Pilgrim reports that the formidable Countess of Bathurst’s ‘reasons for donating the Bathurst Cup are, for the moment, obscured by the mists of time. Extensive research within the archives of the T&RA has revealed nothing. An article in The Field from 1921 states that this “generous gift” would “do a great deal to spread the knowledge of tennis both here and abroad and to carry the revival of interest in the game that has been noticeable in the last few years.” An interesting footnote emerging from the T&RA archives is that, like the more famous Jules Rimet Trophy awarded to winners of the soccer World Cup, the Bathurst Cup also went missing. In 1972 it vanished completely, only to reappear later in the same year, after the insurance money had been collected. (The insurers were reimbursed, of course.) It is now stored securely, and winning teams hold a replica trophy commissioned in 1987".Further correspondence with Nigel A’Brassard raised the question whether the Countess’s father, Algernon Borthwick, was a Grocer? Research continues to find out more about this enigmatic Grocer associated treasure.
Fascinating Fact No 8 - The Rogue Clerk
The first intimation of trouble occurred in May 1796. The Wardens discovered ‘an Execution for Debt in the Clerk’s House’ and in order ‘to preserve the honour and credit of the Company, and to save the House from being torn to pieces by public Auction’ they ‘had taken a bill of sale of the Furniture, Goods and Effects seized in Execution from the Sheriffs and … paid the appraised value … of £585 5s’. Then as now the Clerk had accommodation in the Hall, and this particular Clerk, Richard Whalley Bridgman had been appointed in 1787. Meanwhile the Company had received a letter from the scoundrel Clerk, sadly we don’t know its contents, but we assume that he had swiftly absented himself from the scene of his crime. Bridgman’s painstaking transcriptions in a flourishing hand of the Company’s early records, for which he was paid extra in thanks by his employers, take on a new diversionary light as the story of his misdeeds further unfolds.
Things were to get worse. On 7th June 1796 a special meeting of the Court of Assistants was held, at which the Master reported that he and his ‘Brother Wardens’ had discovered that ‘a Considerable Sum of Money had been received by the … Clerk of this Company for Rents … which had not been brought to Account, amounting to upwards of £1,500’. Further investigation revealed that the total amount embezzled was in fact much more, and calculated at £2,317 12s 3d. This was an immense sum, only five years later, the total cost of building a new Hall came to six times this amount. The Wardens decided to seek legal advice ‘upon the best, surest and most Expeditious mode of proving the Company’s Debt under the Commission of Bankruptcy issued against Bridgman’. They also decided to call upon William Lucas Esq. and Daniel Whalley Esq. for the £1,000 security that had been agreed by them at the time of Bridgman’s appointment, a usual practice that had never before required testing. It took over sixteen months for them to respond. They explained that they had ‘before advanced to … [Bridgman] a Sum to that amount in the year 1793 to keep him in his Situation, though not signified to the Company’. Although the Company decided to ‘enforce their obligation’ nothing more appears in the Court Minutes, and the case appears to have been laid to rest. All we know about Bridgman is that he turned to writing legal works, publishing eleven books between 1798 and 1817, and died at Bath aged 59 in 1820.
Thanks to Pauline Sidell for sourcing this information in the Company’s Court Minutes.
Fascinating Fact No 7 - The Importance of Friends in High Places
In his diary entry for Tuesday 28th February 1660 Samuel Pepys noted that, after a breakfast of herrings, he rode into London to find that it ‘was a thanksgiving day throughout the City for the return of the Parliament’. At St Paul’s Cathedral he saw ‘General Monck there, who was to have a great entertainment at Grocers’ Hall’. The timing of the Grocer entertainment was astute. After the death of Oliver Cromwell in 1658 public opinion, worn out by nearly twenty years of civil war and its aftermath, had shifted in favour of the Restoration of the monarchy, and its chief architect was General Monck (1608-70).
The 28th February was a landmark day for Company and Country, as the Parliament that had been returned was overwhelmingly Royalist, and the Grocers were aligning themselves with the movement and the man.The sumptuous banquet which they staged in Monck’s honour that day, and to which his wife, in customary Grocer fashion was invited, was also the occasion of his acceptance of the Honorary Freedom of the Company ‘in particular respect and gratification … for his professions of tenderness and care for the honour and safety of the City’. Monck had marched his regiment from Coldstream on the Scottish borders to London on 1st January 1660, to restore law and order. When King Charles II delivered the Declaration of Breda on 4th April, which was largely based on Monck’s recommendations, offering reconciliation and forgiveness, the route to the Restoration was secured. When the King landed at Dover, General Monck was the first to greet him. On 29th May the new King entered London. The day was made a public holiday from henceforth, and the Grocers’ Company had a special reason to honour it with an annual dinner, (on the day nearest possible) which was later known was the Commemoration or Restoration Feast, combining the older dinner in honour of the Company’s patron saint, St Antonin with a celebration of the Restoration. It may have been through the Company’s association with the trusted General that Charles II accepted the unique position of the Sovereign Mastership of the Company in 1660, when Monck returned to Grocers’ Hall with the King to enjoy an even more lavish banquet in celebration of the event. The close association of General Monck with the Grocers’ Company was reaffirmed in 2008, when the regiment that Monck formed in 1650, at Coldstream in Scotland, part of Cromwell’s New Model Army, became affiliated to the Company. The affiliation was marked by the generous loan of a portrait of General Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle from Monck’s regiment, known from 1670 as the Coldstream Guards, to the Company. It now hangs in the Court Dining Room. The portrait, attributed to Peter Lely, was given to the Coldstream Guards by Lieutenant Colonel Hon. Lewis Payn Dawnay (1846-1910)
Fascinating Fact No 6 - Peppercorns, Cloves or Nails
There is an undated article in the Grocers’ Company Library. It is by Charles Burford Goodhart (1919-2000), a zoologist, Fellow of Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, and a man with a distinguished Grocer pedigree. In the article he applies the rigour of his academic mind to some problems of Grocer heraldry.
Goodhart begins with the familiar Grocers’ Company coat of arms, granted in 1532, incorporating a chevron with nine cloves, the first use of the clove, as Goodhart notes, as a charge (emblem) in heraldry. He further muses that it does seem rather strange that cloves were chosen, rather than peppercorns which connect more closely with the origin of the Company.
The camel crest granted thirty years later, was described by William Hervey,
the Clarenceux King of Arms, who granted them as ‘bearing two (‘pepper Baggs’
deleted) bagys of ppyr [pepper] argent powdered with cloves and corded sable [‘powdered
and corded sable’ deleted [‘spangled with Cloves Argent’ deleted]. It is far from clear why the bags
of pepper should ever have been painted with cloves, and the deletions in
Hervey’s description suggest that he too may have been puzzled. In Sir George
Bellew’s up-to-date description of 1949 ‘a camel … with two bales argent semee
of cloves’, all references to pepper were removed, perhaps in an attempt to
tidy things up.
Goodhart then suggests that seventeenth century Grocers may themselves have been a bit confused as to the real significance of the word ‘clove’ which by itself, and so spelt, had only recently come to mean the spice. Previously it had been ‘clou de girofle’ . Clou is the ordinary French word for ‘nail’ so that ‘clou de girofle’ meant ‘nail of girofle’, referring to the nail-like buds. Remember too that the Fraternity’s records were kept in Anglo-French until the 1420s. So, if the original meaning of cloves was nails, what did they have to do with Grocers? Actually, Goodhart notes, rather a lot, in connection with weights and measures which were very much the concern of the mystery at the time of its foundation in 1345. Before the introduction of the avoirdupois system in 1340, a weighing instrument called an ‘auncel’ was used. The weight of the goods suspended from its shorter arm were marked off by a row of nails. The Latin for nail is clavus, and clou in French. The word clove continued to be used as a unit for weight for wool up to the mid-nineteenth century, long after the connection with auncel nails had been forgotten. Goodhart also draws attention to the fact that in the arms used before the 1532 grant, ten not nine cloves sometimes appear, (four at the top) which might relate to the 10 clove auncel. Perhaps, Goodhart suggests, this lies behind the puzzling choice of cloves in preference to peppercorns on the Grocers’ Company arms.
Fascination Fact No 5 - A Case of Multiple Mistaken Identity
Mr Rupert Gavin drew our attention to a recent article in the Evening Standard, heralding the return to London of a magnificent portrait of a Lord Mayor to hang in the ‘British Baroque’ exhibition at Tate Britain. The portrait, owned and lent to the exhibition by the Banque de France, had been purchased early last century under the mistaken belief that it was of Louis XIV’s son the Dauphin, the title given to the heir apparent to the throne of France. This attribution was based on the dolphins (the French for dolphin being dauphin) decorating the elaborate horse harness, that also appear on the Dauphin’s arms. The portrait had been brought to the attention of Mr James Roundell in 2014, by Lane Fine Art, who suggested that the portrait was of Houblon.
When Mr Roundell had Mark Carney to lunch at the Hall soon after, he jested that he might like to buy it, and restore it to its rightful place in Princes Street. As the sitter holds the pearl-studded sword of state presented to the City by Elizabeth I, and the outline of Temple Bar (left) and the dome of St Paul’s (right) are visible in the background, his identity as a Lord Mayor is secure. But which Lord Mayor? Unlike the Dauphin’s dolphins which have been open to interpretation, the arms of the Grocers’ Company also on the harness are not. It was assumed, given the grandeur and size of the painting, that it was the Grocer and first Governor of the Bank of England, Sir John Houblon (1632-1712), Lord Mayor in 1695-6. However the Tate curators put the dolphins, Grocers’ arms and Mayoralty together, to suggest that the portrait is not of Houblon but of another great Grocer, Sir Henry Tulse (1620-89), (who gave his name to Tulse Hill), Lord Mayor in 1683-4, his arms being a bend nebulae (wavy) between two dolphins embowed (curved). I can think of no other portrait of a Lord Mayor mounted on horseback. Tulse’s white steed matches in colour and pose that of the King in another painting in the exhibition. As Tulse was placed in post by King Charles II this would reinforce his candidature for sitter and explain its unique composition. Meanwhile the Tate curators are playing it cautious, giving the date of the painting as c.1695-1705, suggesting a retrospective portrait, other possible sitters, and noting that an article on the subject is forthcoming, which we await with anticipation.
Fascinating Fact No 4 - The World War II and The Grocers' Company
The Grocers' Company was to face many near misses. On the 9th September a bomb fell through the roof of the Bank of England, near the corner of Princes Street and Lothbury, which fortunately failed to explode.
In November disaster was averted at Grocers’ Hall thanks to the valet and the night watchman who swiftly extinguished ‘the incendiary bombs which had fallen on the Hall’. As the Halls of other Companies were destroyed so the Grocers Company was able offer its own, which remained miraculously intact even during the Blitz, to others. Even as battered Britain glimpsed victory on the horizon, following the successful D-Day landings in Normandy on 6th June 1944, a final vicious air assault began. From 13th June Hitler launched new ‘Vengeance’ or V-weapons against London, beginning an eighty day campaign. On 19th July 1944 the Hall was hit by a V1 flying bomb, known to Londoners as a ‘Doodlebug’ (see link below). The Master, Mr Alfred Woodhouse (1893-1953), reported that the Hall had been ‘hit that morning soon after 9 o’clock by a flying bomb which had demolished some the bedrooms, the Library, the Inner Drawing Room, the Beadle’s office and part of the Clerk’s office besides damaging the roof and nearly all the windows’. Fortunately no one was injured. Despite the devastation the scheduled Court Meeting proceeded as normal, thanks to accommodation and luncheon provided by the Chairman at Lloyds. Although the Minute Book was in the strong room and inaccessible, the usual consideration of ‘memorials on behalf of Public Charities’ took place. We are lucky to have surviving photographs, taken for the War Damage Commission, that record the devastating event.'
Fascinating Fact No 3 - The Grocers' Wing of The Royal London Hospital
The NHS Livery Kitchen initiative renews a longstanding connection the Grocers’ Company has with The Royal London Hospital. The Grocers’ Company has a long tradition of supporting London hospitals, with charitable donations regularly given by individual Grocers and the Company to St Bartholomew’s, St Thomas’s, Bethlem, Bridewell, as well as Christs, from at least the 1500s. The largest donation made by the Company to a hospital however was made in 1873 for the building of a new wing to the London Hospital, built in 1752-78. As the population increased there were severe problems in finding enough beds The proposed solution was to extend the hospital to provide 200 additional beds.
A public fundraising campaign was launched with the aim of securing £100,000 towards new buildings and the operating costs of an enlarged hospital. The centrepiece of this wave of hospital expansion was theGrocers’ Company’s Wing, named in recognition of a donation from the City livery company. Their ‘princely gift’ of £25,000, one quarter of the whole fund raising target, was accompanied by numerous conditions, including that the proposed wing should be completed within three years. The Grocers’ Company’s Wing was formally opened by Queen Victoria in March 1876, in a grand celebration reported to have lent ‘an attractive and joyous aspect to (an) ordinarily dull and dingy but busy quarter’. The size of the Grocers’ Company donation can be put in the context of the Company's annual expenditure of £35,000 in 1880 (of which more than three fifths was spent on education and charity) not including the gift of 25,000l. to the London Hospital (and 28,000l. at Oundle School).
The picture showd the Illustrated London News: Her Majesty Queen Victoria visiting the London Hospital, Whitechapel: the Duke of Cambridge giving the loyal address. Wood engraving, March 1876. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Fascinating Fact No 2 - A Mystery Object
In March 2019 Vivian Bairstow a Past Master of the Coopers contacted the Grocers about a forthcoming sale at the auctioneers Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury. The Lot which piqued his interest was advertised as ‘3 Victorian painted bronze coach badges’ (14.6 cm x 10.7 cm) bearing respectively the arms of the Grocers, the Wheelwrights and the Horners. They were clearly all made at the same time, for the same function. All three Companies expressed interest and the ‘badges’ were duly purchased, each Company taking their own badge. But are these really coach badges, and if not, what could they be for?
The obvious place to start research was at the Coachmakers’ Company whose Clerk expressed doubt as to their supposed function, though it was suggested that they might have been fixed to hired coaches. They do not look like any other coach badges extant, examples of which are at the Museum of London. Nor are there any references to the purchase or use of such badges, or even coaches, in the Grocers’ Company Court Minutes. They are too small to be barge or ‘stern’ badges, and if really Victorian, then made at a time when the Company barges were being sold. Neither do they confirm to the design of City property marks, also made of cast metal and painted.
Graham Westwell, the Assistant Archivist and Past Master of the Wheelwrights suggested contacting the Cutlers who have a collection of badges, but their Clerk responded ‘I’m afraid that I am completely at a loss on this one!’. Next he tried Guildhall, still no luck, but his last idea seems the most likely, that they are badges to decorate a sword rest, explaining why they ‘match’. Originally installed in City churches to hold the sword of state when the Lord Mayor was attending a service, the oldest survives from 1664, and the practice ceased in 1883. However the expert in this field Tony Tucker questions the fittings on the badges, two screw holes one at top and the other at bottom, which do not match surviving examples that are set flush into the decorative ironwork frame. Can anyone help us solve the mystery of what they are?
Fascinating Fact No 1 - The Colour of the Company's Livery Gowns
In 1956 the rebuilding of the Fourth Hall, after the damage caused in the Blitz, was complete. It was a time to look forward. That year the Court asked the Wardens‘to recommend a new gown for adoption for the Master, Wardens and Livery’,which prompted detailed research into the gowns worn in the past, both by the Grocers and the other Companies of the Great Twelve, to see if there were important historical precedents and traditions. The result is a fascinating collection of papers, and the revelation, recorded in the Court Minutes of 1st February 1957, that ‘there is no evidence that any Company has a prescribed right to any particular colour or colours’.They also discovered that the choice of colour changed over time.
In 1402 the Grocers chose green and celestryn [blue] for their gowns, in 1414 scarlet and green, while in the 1450s the Grocers purchased regular supplies of verdulet (bright bluish green) cloth from weavers in Coggleshall Essex. Sombre plain black gowns superseded the bright and part-coloured gowns after the Reformation.
In 1957 the Wardens, now‘free to make our recommendations from all the colours and materials now available’ chose the green you have today. Perhaps this is a version of what Eric Hobsbawm christened an ‘invented tradition’, or in this case a‘re-invented’ one, given the earlier preferences shown for green?
A watercolour sketch of a gown survives in the archive at the Hall, which suggests that the colour blue was considered, though rejected, at this time.
Grocers' Gates
From Grossers to Grocers
A new beautifully written and wonderfully illustrated History of the Grocers’ Company From Foundation to 1798 By Dr Helen Clifford. To order, like on this link Book order form and return it to: enquiries@grocershall.co.uk