Keeping Brewers' Hall Shipshape Since 1438

As Brewers' Hall undergoes its annual August deep clean and routine maintenance, it is worth remembering that the Company has been carrying out much the same work for centuries.

Back in August 1439, carpenter and labourer John Houghton was paid for three days to make “the chamber door at the stair end of our hall, with hinges and hooks, with making of the parlour door [… and] 3 pins and boring of 3 holes under the said windows in the parlour, with dressing up of loam in the yard …and sweeping of our hall and hanging of our hall against the feast of the Haberdashers”. His fee of 15 pence may sound modest, but was worth roughly £40 in today's money.

John Houghton appears frequently in Porlond's Book and emerges as something of the Brewers' Hall handyman. He was employed many times as recorded by Porlond for jobs including mending guttering, stairs and windows, making shelves and cupboards, ‘daubing’, plastering and mortaring and more general tasks as cleaning and preparing the hall for hire. One winter he received 5 pence a day (£13.50) ‘for breaking of the frost that was in the canal so the water should not enter into our almshouse nor enter in at our great gate, with the making clean of the gutters in our place in taking out snow’. He also received a food allowance on that occasion!

Porlond was Clerk from 1418 to 1440 and kept a detailed record of the affairs of the Company at this time. Both volumes of the transcription of Porlond’s Book have now been published, allowing us to discover even more about daily life at the Brewers in the early fifteenth century. While major events and decisions are recorded, it is often these small details, from sweeping the Hall to repairing doors and clearing frozen waterways, that bring the Company's history most vividly to life.