THE LEATHERSELLERS
A SHORT HISTORY
02
The interior of the second Hall drawn shortly before demolition in 1799, showing the elaborately carved Elizabethan/Jacobean screen.
The Company entered the sixteenth century on a firm footing. A series of amalgamations with the whittawyers, glovers-pursers and pouchmakers (though the Glovers later seceded in the 1630s to form a separate Company) had eliminated potential rivals, and members were generous with bequests of plate, money and property. ...IN 1543 THE LEATHERSELLERS SEIZED THE OPPORTUNITY TO PURCHASE THE FORMER PRIORY OF ST HELEN’S, BISHOPSGATE, AND CONVERT IT INTO A HALL. The Company’s importance at this point is reflected in its position at number fifteen in the order of precedence, settled by the Court of Aldermen in 1516. This improved standing was naturally accompanied by a desire for more prestigious surroundings, and in 1543 the Leathersellers seized the opportunity to purchase the former priory of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and convert it into their Hall.
A community of Benedictine nuns had been established at St Helen’s in the thirteenth century on the site of a much earlier church. The foundation was wealthy, owning most of the parish of St Helen’s, but attempts to evade the Dissolution by bribing Thomas Cromwell were unsuccessful, and the priory was surrendered to Henry VIII in 1538. The Leathersellers purchased the site five years later from Sir Richard Williams, alias Cromwell, Thomas Cromwell’s nephew. Most of the purchase money of £380 was donated by a wealthy leatherseller, John Hasilwood, and in return the Company leased him the former Prioress’s lodgings and undertook to build almshouses on the estate. Work began to convert the priory into a Hall, but almost at once the Company came close to losing everything. For legal reasons the conveyance had to be in the name of one trustee, and the Company chose Thomas Kendall, “an ancient man…well thought of, being rich and without children”, with the intent that the estate should be bequeathed to the Company in his will. However, Kendall lived longer than anticipated and unexpectedly married and produced heirs, who subsequently pressed their claim to this lucrative property. The legal wrangling which ensued was only settled in 1677 with a payment of £25 to Kendall’s descendants.
No illustration survives of the Company’s first Hall on London Wall, used from 1476 to 1543, though this plan of 1614 (drawn with north at the bottom) shows the premises after conversion into shops and dwellings. The triangular-shaped garden at the top of the plan lay behind the Hall to the south.
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