No. 1 on the east of Basinghall Street was probably built early in the nineteenth century; the buildings which follow it are chiefly modern. The whole street is rather fine, though too narrow for much effect. There are in it many great “houses,” “chambers,” and “buildings” occupied in floors. Gresham Buildings are faced with dark-coloured stone and rise comparatively high. The ground-floor walls on the exterior are covered with the most elaborate stonework representations of flowers and foliage. The City of London Court in the passage known as Guildhall Buildings is picturesquely built in a perpendicular style of Gothic. A great square stone building opposite was built in 1890, and next to it a plain Portland stone edifice contains the Lord Mayor’s court office. The City Library and Museum form a picturesque group of buildings in the west of Basinghall Street.
Near at hand is the Coopers’ Hall with a narrow frontage.
THE COOPERS COMPANY
The Coopers Company was incorporated in 1501 by charter of King Henry VII., dated 29th April, in the sixteenth year of his reign. There is no record, however, of any anterior charter. There is no doubt that the Coopers were one of the early mysteries or brotherhoods of the City of London, though it is difficult to assign a correct date of their origin. The Company’s archives, however, show that the Company had existed for a considerable period prior to the date of its incorporation. A subsequent charter was granted on the 30th August, in the thirteenth year of King Charles II. This is the governing charter, and its provisions regulate the management of the Company to the present day. Under the statute of 23 Henry VII. cap. 4, power is given to the wardens of the Company with one of the mayor’s officers to gauge all casks in the City of London and the suburbs, and within two miles’ compass without the suburbs, and to mark such barrels when gauged. By a subsequent Act, 31 Elizabeth, cap. 8, “for the true gauging of vessels brought from beyond the seas, converted by brewers for the utterance and sale of ale and beer,” brewers were prohibited from selling or putting to sale any ale or beer in any such vessels within the limits before mentioned before the same should be lawfully gauged and marked by the master and wardens of the Coopers Company. The Company do not now exercise, and have not for a considerable period exercised, any control over the trade of coopers.
It is quite certain that a craft so technical and so useful as that of the cooper must have been constituted as a guild as soon as craftsmen began to work together at all. In the year 1396 (Riley, p. 541), “the goodmen of the trade of Coopers” presented a code of ordinances for the regulation of the trade. They complained that certain persons of the trade were in the habit of making casks out of wood which had been used for oil and soap casks, so that ale or wine put into these casks was spoiled. Therefore it is certain that their guild did not possess authority over the trade at that time. This is shown again in 1413, when certain Master Coopers again complained to the mayor that one Richard Bartlot, fishmonger, had made 260 vessels called barrels and firkins of unseasoned wood and of false measure. These vessels were ordered to be destroyed. Perhaps in order to prevent similar practices, it was decreed that every cooper should mark his work by his own trade-mark.
The Corporate Income of the Company is given in 1898 as £2400; the Trust Income as £5000; the number of the livery as 200. Their Hall is 71 Basinghall Street, on the site of two previous halls.
Close by is the “Wool Exchange and Colonial Office” with an open entry supported by polished granite pillars, whose capitals are carved as rams’ heads. This is rather a fine building, with segmental windows set closely all across the frontage. Bevois House, just completed, takes a good line of curvage and is of white stone. Before Guildhall Chambers there is an old house built of narrow red bricks, with semicircular pillars on each side of the centre window frame, and above, on a slab of stone, the date 1660. The site of St. Michael’s Church is here. A row of straight ordinary business houses succeeds. On the east are Guildhall Chambers, plastered houses built round an asphalt court. The centre one has a small portico with Ionic columns; the rest of the court is plain and severe, but not ineffective.
The Church of St. Michael, Bassishaw, was situated on the west side of Basinghall Street. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, but destroyed by the Great Fire, and again rebuilt, by Wren, between 1676 and 1679. In 1895 the church was closed, a commission having been issued in 1893 by the Bishop of London to inquire into the expediency of uniting this with the parishes of St. Lawrence, Jewry, and St. Mary Magdalene, Milk Street. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1286.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Prior and Canons of St. Bartholomew’s about 1140, given by the Bishop of London; Henry III.; Thomas de Bassinges, 1246, who left it to his wife by will dated 1275; Henry Bodyk, 1327, who left it to Johanna his wife; Nicholas de Chaddesdon, who sold it in 1358 to Sir John de Beauchamp, brother to the Earl of Warwick; Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, 1435, in whose successors it continues.
Houseling people in 1548 were 500.