‘The Word of the Lord Endures Forever’
Next time you walk up Ludgate Hill towards St Paul’s, turn left down the narrow passage just beyond the church of St Martin Within Ludgate and you will find yourself in a quiet courtyard where Stationers’ Hall has stood since the sixteen-seventies.
For centuries, this whole district was the heart of the printing and publishing, with publishers lining Ludgate Hill, St Paul’s Churchyard and Paternoster Row, while newspapers operated from Fleet St. Today, only Stationers’ Hall and St Bride Printing Library, down behind Ludgate Circus, remain as evidence of this lost endeavour that once flourished here.
Yet the Stationers’ Company was founded in 1403, predating printing. At first it was a guild of scriveners, illuminators, bookbinders, booksellers and suppliers of parchment, ink and paper. Even the term ‘stationer’ originates here with the stalls in St Paul’s Churchyard where they traded, which were immovable – in other words, ‘stationary’ stalls selling ‘stationery.’
No-one whose life is bound up with writing and words can fail to be touched by a visit to Stationers’ Hall. From 1557, when Mary Stewart granted the Stationers their Charter and for the next three hundred years, members had the monopoly upon publishing and once one member had published a text no-one else could publish it, thus the phrase ‘Entered at Stationers’ Hall’ became a guarantee of copyright.
Built in the decade following the Fire of London, the Great Hall was panelled by Stephen College ‘the protestant joiner’ at price of £300 in 1674. In spite of damage in the London Blitz and extensive alterations to other buildings, this central space retains its integrity as an historic interior. At one end, an ornate Victorian window shows William Caxton presenting his printing to Edward IV while an intricate and darkly detailed wooden Restoration screen faces it from the other. Wooden cases display ancient plate, colourful flags hang overhead, ranks of serried crests line the walls, stained glass panels of Shakespeare and Tyndale filter daylight while – all around – books are to be spied, carved into the architectural design.
A hidden enclave cloistered from the hubbub of the modern City, where illustrious portraits of former gentlemen publishers – including Samuel Richardson – peer down silently at you from the walls, Stationers’ Hall quietly overwhelms you with the history and origins of print in London through six centuries.
The Stock Room
The Stock Room c. 1910
The Stock Room door, c.1910
Panel of Stationers that became Lord Mayor includes JJ Baddeley, 1921
The Great Hall, where Purcell’s Hymn to St Cecilia was first performed in 1692
The Great Hall c. 1910
Stained glass window of 1888 showing Caxton presenting his printing to Edward IV
The vestibule to Great Hall
The Stationers’ Garden
The Court Room with a painting by Benjamin West
Looking out from the Court Room to the garden with the Master’s chair on the right
The Court Room
The Court Room, c 1910
Exterior of Stationer’s Hall, c. 1910
Archive photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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