Guilds -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
“Then in the year 1443, the 21st of Henry VI., John Hatherley, mayor,
purchased licence of the said king to take up two hundred fodder of
lead, for the building of water conduits, a common granary, and the
cross in West Chepe, more richly, for the honour of the City. In the
year next following, the parson and parish of St. Dunstan, in the east
of London, seeing the famous and mighty man (for the words be in the
grant, _nobilis et potens vir_), Simon Eyre, citizen of London, among
other his works of piety, effectually determined to erect and build a
certain granary upon the soil of the same city at Leadenhall, of his own
charges, for the common utility of the said city, to the amplifying and
enlarging of the said granary, granted to Henry Frowicke, then mayor,
the aldermen and commonalty, and their successors for ever, all their
tenements, with the appurtenances, sometime called the Horsemill, in
Grasse Street, for the annual rent of four pounds, etc. Also, certain
evidences of an alley and tenements pertaining to the Horsemill
adjoining to the said Leaden hall in Grasse Street, given by William
Kingstone, fishmonger, unto the parish church of St. Peter upon
Cornehill, do specify the said granary to be built by the said
honourable and famous merchant, Simon Eyre, sometime an upholsterer, and
then a draper, in the year 1419. He built it of squared stone, in form
as now it showeth, with a fair and large chapel in the east side of the
quadrant, over the porch of which he caused to be written, _Dextra
Domini exaltavit me_ (The Lord’s right hand exalted me). Within the said
church on the north wall, was written, _Honorandus famosus mercator
Simon Eyre hujus operis_, etc. In English thus: ‘The honourable and
famous merchant, Simon Eyre, founder of this work, once mayor of this
City, citizen and draper of the same, departed out of this life, the
18th day of September, the year from the incarnation of Christ 1459, and
the 38th year of the reign of King Henry VI.’” (Stow’s _Survey_, p.
162).
Before the middle of the fourteenth century Leadenhall had become a
market for poultry. In 1345 it was ordered that strange folk, _i.e._
people from outside the City, bringing poultry for sale should no longer
hawk it about from house to house, but should take it to the Leaden
Hall, and should there sell it, and nowhere else. Also that citizens who
sell poultry should offer it on the west side of the Tun of Cornhill
(Riley, pp. 220, 221).
The market was not, however, confined to the sale of poultry, as is
proved by the following request of the commons of the City, in the year
1503:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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