THE COACHMAKERS COMPANY
The Hall stands on the site of Shelley House, owned by Sir Thomas Shelley temp Henry IV. Afterwards it was named Bacon House by Nicholas Bacon. “A plain man, direct and constant, without all finesse and doubleness,” who dwelt here till the Queen, Elizabeth, made him Lord Keeper in 1558, when he moved hence. He was the father of Lord Bacon, the philosopher. He sometime rebuilt this house, and was buried in St. Paul’s, where his effigy yet remains. After the Lord Keeper’s departure, William Fleetwood, Recorder of London, lived here between 1575 and 1586, yet he seems to have died in a house of his own building, in Noble Street, to the north of this (1593-94). By continual industry, advanced by natural good parts, he attained to the name of an eminent lawyer. He was a man of a merry conceit, eloquent and very zealous against vagrants, mass-priests, and papists. In 1638, Sir Arthur Savage and others sold the house to one Charles Bostock, scrivener. Now, the Common Scriveners had been a Company of this City by prescription, time out of mind. They made regulations for their profession in 1373; in 1390 they began their Common Paper, a book of ordinances and signatures, still extant. Yet there is no account of any Hall for them. In 1497 they met at the dwelling-place of Henry Woodcock, their warden; in 1557 at Wax Chandlers’ Hall. Their Charter of Incorporation (January 28, 1616-17) ordained a Hall, so in 1631 they bought Bacon House for £810. After the Great Fire of 1666 they rebuilt this.
Afterwards the Coachmakers Company treated for its purchase, and bought it with houses in Oat Lane, for £1600, raised by gift. For though coaches had become common since the seventeenth century began, and the Coach and Coach-Harness Makers had been incorporated in 1677, they had up till then no Hall.
Early in the nineteenth century the Hall had become a warehouse, whose counting-house retained the Coachmakers’ arms and a name-list of their benefactors. In 1841 they rebuilt it; in 1843 furnished it anew by subscription.
In 1870, borrowing money, they built the present Hall.
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: