Wax Chandlers' Hall

Wax Chandlers' Hall has stood at 6 Gresham Street, opposite Guildhall, since the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers acquired the site in 1501. The current building — the sixth hall raised here, the previous five lost variously to the Great Fire, the cutting of Gresham Street itself and simple disrepair — was completed in 1958, its rusticated granite ground floor surviving from an earlier, 1849 design by Charles Fowler. A refurbishment completed in 2007 reworked the interior without touching that footprint.

Upstairs, the Livery Hall is the Company's principal room: pale blue walls hung with portraits of past Masters, tall sash windows onto Gresham Street, a crystal chandelier, and a stained-glass panel of the Company arms. It seats a formal dinner around its parquet floor or clears for a standing reception. Two smaller rooms complete the offer — the Court Room, where the Company's Court of Assistants meets, and the Parlour — each suited to a more intimate private dining or meeting party, and hireable on their own or alongside the Hall.

The Company works with a short list of approved caterers rather than running its own kitchen, and keeps the discretion of a working livery hall: a private City address a few minutes from St Paul's and Bank, its own street entrance, and none of the passing trade a restaurant or bar contends with.