Stationers' Hall

Stationers' Hall was completed in 1673, rebuilt on Ave Maria Lane after the Great Fire took the Company's first hall, and it has been the home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers ever since. The Main Hall is the reason to come: carved oak panelling from the 1600s, an oak floor, livery banners overhead, and five stained-glass windows lit from behind after dark, one of them showing Caxton demonstrating his press to Edward IV. A carved screen closes the south end, and above it sits a minstrels' gallery the Company still lets bands and choirs use.

Four rooms interconnect. The Main Hall takes 450 for a standing reception, 205 at a formal top table and 200 for dinner and dancing. The Court Room is its opposite in temperament, all gold rococo and red carpet, holding 180 standing or 90 on rounds, with an 18th-century mantelpiece and a wrought-iron staircase down to the garden. The Stock Room, panelled and hung with the armorial shields of past Masters, seats 60 and has a wooden floor, so it doubles as a second dancing room. Then there is the garden itself: a walled City plot of hydrangeas and one enormous plane tree, taking 200 for a reception, and, since the £7.5m restoration reopened the building in July 2022, reached through its own entrance. The Charter Room and the third-floor seminar suite came out of that same programme.

For music the terms are plain and worth knowing early. The Company permits candles, live music and dancing until midnight, extensions can be applied for, and it sets no sound limit, asking only that the band or DJ agree a level with the Hall Manager on the night. There is a house audio system and in-house staging, but bands and DJs bring their own equipment. Catering runs through the resident caterer or the accredited list; outside caterers are not admitted except on cultural grounds.