THE COACH AND COACH-HARNESS MAKERS COMPANY
The date of the first charter is 31st May, 29 Charles II., 1677, and is for the general protection and supervision of the trade of coachmakers and coach-harness makers.
In the early days of the Company, the master, wardens, and assistants used to visit all the workshops within the prescribed limits of the Company’s sphere of action, but that seems to have engendered bad feelings among the various members of the trade, and so gradually fell into desuetude; but in 1864 the Company granted the free use of the hall for the operative Coachmakers’ Industrial Exhibition, which was opened under the auspices of the Marquis of Lansdowne and the Very Reverend Dean Milman, D.D. From that time to the present the Company have continuously offered prizes to those connected with the trade.
At present the number of the livery is 115. The Corporate Income is £970; there is no Trust Income. The Company have of late held exhibitions and offered prizes for the encouragement of coach-building.
St. Olave’s Churchyard is on the south side of Silver Street. A stone inscription tells us that the road was widened 8 feet in 1865 just at this point. The disused graveyard is now open to the public as a recreation ground, and the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association have distributed seats about among the old tombs. Low down by the steps at the entrance is a stone slab bearing a heading of a skull and cross-bones, and beneath the following words:
This was the parish church of St. Olave’s, Silver Street, destroyed by the Dreadful Fire in the year 1666.