Armourers' Hall

Armourers' Hall stands on Coleman Street, the City home of the Worshipful Company of Armourers and Brasiers since the fourteenth century. The Guild of St George of the Armourers was instituted in 1322; brass and copper workers joined the trade as firearms displaced plate armour, and Queen Anne's 1708 charter gave the Brasiers equal standing. The Hall itself is younger than the Company: rebuilt in 1840 to a design by J. H. Good after the medieval hall on the site was cleared, it survived the Blitz when a fire in the Court Room was put out before it could spread. Every room reads the Company's trade directly. The Livery Hall runs the length of the building under a Gothic barrel-vaulted ceiling, sea-green walls lined floor to cornice with sixteenth and seventeenth century helmets, breastplates, pikes and swords, two full suits standing sentry either side of the fireplace. Brass candelabra in continuous use since the 1750s still light the room; Armourers' is one of only two livery halls where guests dine by candlelight. The Gold Drawing Room, one floor removed from the armour, is hung with portraits of Sir Henry Lee and his mistress Anne Vavasour flanking a suit of Lee's own field armour, lit by two nineteenth-century chandeliers and floored in a copy of the V&A's Ardebil carpet. The Court Room holds a Regency dining table beneath a 1767 clock and the Company's 1556 Grant of Arms, and the Library, the smallest and most private of the rooms, is a book-lined sitting room in ox-blood red.

All four rooms sit on one level and hire out together or separately, run by the Hall's own events team rather than a marketplace booking flow. Recommended caterers are available, though the Hall accepts outside suppliers.