Bakers' Hall

The Worshipful Company of Bakers has held its site on Harp Lane for more than five hundred years, and traces its City of London origins back over eight centuries — it is the second oldest recorded guild in the City. Three earlier halls stood here. The first was lost in the Great Fire of 1666; its 1673 replacement went in the Thames Street fire of 1715; and the third, rebuilt between 1719 and 1722, was destroyed in the first Blitz on the City in 1940. The present hall, the fourth, was built in 1963 on the original 1506 freehold, with a block of offices raised above it to pay for the work.

The Livery Hall is the largest room and the setting for the Company's own dinners. Brazilian mahogany panelling runs its length beneath a line of pendant lights, and three stained glass windows by John Piper, abstract in blue and red, stand for the three fires that took the halls before it. A mezzanine minstrels' gallery overlooks the floor and holds a baby grand piano. On the lower ground floor the Court Room, where the Company's Court still meets, is hung with charters granted by James I and James II and takes an oval dining table, tiered livery-court benches or a cleared floor and uplighting. Between them sits the Charter Gallery, lined with cabinets of Company silver against a gold phoenix wall-covering and lit from floor-to-ceiling windows at one end.

The hall lets as a blank canvas or through one of its nominated caterers, with further caterers taken by agreement. A core audio-visual package covers screen, projector and microphone, and the Livery Hall carries an installed PA system and an induction loop. The building is fully wheelchair accessible and licensed to 11pm, with extensions available. St Dunstan in the East, the garden inside Wren's ruined church, is next door.