Guilds -- England -- London; London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
The Companies’ Halls offer some index to the trades of the quarter.
There are still Broderers’ Hall, Curriers’ Hall, Armourers’ Hall,
Coopers’ Hall, Parish Clerk’s Hall, Brewers’ Hall, Girdlers’ Hall; and
there were Haberdashers’ Hall, Mercers’ Hall, Wax Chandlers’ Hall,
Masons’ Hall, Plaisterers’ Hall, Pinners’ Hall, Barber Surgeons’ Hall,
Founders’ Hall, Weavers’ Hall, and Scriveners’ Hall, which have now been
removed elsewhere or destroyed. These trades, we may note, are for the
most part of the humbler kind.
=Coleman Street= is described by Stow as “a fair and large Street on
both sides built with divers fair houses, besides alleys with small
tenements in great numbers.”
Cunningham enumerates the chief events connected with the street:
“The five members accused of treason by Charles I. concealed themselves
in this street. ‘The Star,’ in Coleman Street, was a tavern where Oliver
Cromwell and several of his party occasionally met.... In a conventicle
in ‘Swan Alley,’ on the east side of this street, Venner, a wine-cooper
and Millenarian, preached the opinions of his sect to ‘the soldiers of
King Jesus’” (see _London in the Time of the Stuarts_, p. 68 _et seq._).
“John Goodwin, minister in Coleman Street, waited on Charles I. the day
before the King’s execution, tendered his services, and offered to pray
for him. The King thanked him, but said he had chosen Dr. Juxon, whom he
knew. Vicars wrote an attack on Goodwin, called ‘The Coleman-street
Conclave Visited!’ Justice Clement, in Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in his
Humour_, lived in Coleman Street; and Cowley wrote a play called _Cutter
of Coleman-street_. Bloomfield, author of ‘The Farmer’s Boy,’ followed
his original calling of a shoemaker at No. 14 Great Bell-yard in this
street.”
ST. STEPHEN, COLEMAN STREET
The Church of St. Stephen, Coleman Street, was “at first a Jews’
synagogue, then a parish church, then a chapel to St. Olave’s in the
Jewry, now (7 Edward IV.) incorporated as a parish church” (Stow).
It is situated on the west side of Coleman Street, near to the south
end. It was consumed by the Great Fire and rebuilt by Wren. The
earliest date of an incumbent is 1311.
The patronage of the church was in the hands of: The Dean and
Chapter of St. Paul’s, who granted it to the Prior and Convent of
Butley; Henry VIII. seized it, and in the Crown it continued till
Queen Elizabeth granted it, about 1597, to the parishioners, in
whose successors it continued.
Houseling people in 1548 were 880.
The church is plain, long and narrow, without any aisles, measuring
75 feet in length and 35 feet in breadth. The steeple, which rises
at the north-west, consists of a stone tower, a lantern, and small
spire, the total height being about 65 feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account