Stow designates the hall of the Tallow Chandlers “a proper house.” After the Great Fire it was rebuilt (1672). In 1884 a large red brick and terra-cotta building of five stories, standing upon a granite base, was erected on Dowgate Hill instead, and upon the site of the old house of the Company’s clerk and beadle, and the hall is now approached by a vestibule running under this building. The vestibule leads into an open quadrangle, which was diminished when the above-mentioned house was built. It is surrounded by a Tuscan piazza of ten arcades. This piazza in part belongs to the 1672 building. It was restored in 1871. The building itself is of red brick. On the first floor is the great hall, a handsome apartment 50 feet long by 27 feet wide, having a decorated ceiling, and walls wainscotted with oak panelling and looking-glass to a height of 30 feet. On the south wall are three great mirrors; in a broken pediment over the central one are the arms of Charles II. At the north end is a carved oak screen, in the centre of which are the entrance doors, of handsome carved work filled with stained glass, erected in 1894. The screen itself is of the 1672 building. A heavy carved frieze and cornice passes round the hall above the long windows. The pictures include two by Sir Godfrey Kneller. The court parlour is the handsomest room. It is wainscotted to the ceiling, which is magnificently panelled in oak, and richly gilt, having in the centre an oval compartment enclosed by an exquisitely moulded wreath of flowers. The rest is divided into squares and oblongs, filled with groups of flowers and fruit. An inscription tells us: “This parlour was wainscotted at the expense of Sir Joseph Sheldon, Knt., a member of this Company and Lord Mayor of this City A.D. 1675. Who also gave this Company a barge with all its furniture.” On the second floor is the court-room, which is also wainscotted to the ceiling. Dowgate, the Steelyard, and Cold Harbour were all very near together. The Steelyard was so called from the beam of steel by which goods imported into London were weighed. It stood just where Cannon Street Station now is. It had a fine hall and courtyard, and was for 300 years held by the members of the Hanseatic League, a community of foreigners who enjoyed the monopoly of importing hemp, corn, wax, linen and many other things into England, to the great loss of our own traders. (See _London in the time of the Tudors_, p. 82.)