Vintners' Hall

   On the south side of Upper Thames Street at No.68 1/2, in Vintry Ward (P.O. Directory).

   First mention: " Vinteners' Hall," 1560-1 (Ct. H.W. II. 675).

   Stow says that the land upon which Vintners' Hall was erected was given to the Vintners by Sir John Stodie in 1357 (p.242). Whether at that date it was not possible for them to hold the property or to make use of it in a corporate capacity it is difficult to ascertain, but from the records in the possession of the Company it appears that the property left by Sir John Stodie was in the possession of his heirs in 1408 and that the Vintners only obtained it at a later date, under the Will of Guy Shuldham, 1446 (L. and M Arch. Soc. Trans. III. 446) and John Porter, vintner, 1496 (Ct. H.W. II. 596). No mention is made of this last-named will in the records of the Company as set out in the Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archæological Society, nor in Herbert's account of the Company, but from this will it is evident that the hall and other tenements devised under Guy Shuldham's will had not been previously taken over by the Company, nor converted to their uses, and it is therefore probable that the Hall was altered and the thirteen little tenements adapted for the almshouses as mentioned in the records in the early part of the 16th century.

   The estate of Sir John Stodeye seems to have been situated between two lanes, having towards the east the tenements of the abbess of St. Clare, Aldgate, and late of John Hardell, and towards the west that of John Cressyngham (Trans. L. and M. Arch. Soc. III. 441), and these lanes may be identified with Anchor Alley west and Little Cheapside east, now incorporated in Queen Street, including the site of the present Vintners' Hall. Strype describes it as the Manor of the Vintrie (ed. 1720, I. iii. 2), but it was probably only the mansion house and garden of Sir John Stodeye, not a manor in the feudal sense of the term.

   The original hall was not as large as the present building, part of the site being occupied prior to 1666 by the thirteen almshouses. But after the Fire in that year, the Hall was rebuilt on a larger scale and the almshouses re-erected in the Mile End Road (Herbert, II. 634).

   The Hall was designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Fire and again rebuilt in 1820-3.