Shrewsbury Drapers Guild
Contents
The Drapers' Hall
10 St. Mary's Place,
Shrewsbury
SY1 1DZ
Charity No's: 213372 233903
You are here:
The Hall Today
From the street it is clear that the building has undergone more than one facelift. The ground floor, in particular, displays mostly replacement timbers and the two sash windows which light the meeting room date from the early nineteenth century. It is thought that the projecting window of the great chamber and those in the 1580 extension are late nineteenth-century copies of the originals. The ‘Harnage Tiles’ have been replaced with plain clay tiles, and the decorative gable has been removed from the roof of the extension; this gable bore the date 1582 and a puzzling inscription. Both parts of the upper storey have their original timber frames with the decorative motifs plainly visible.
Right: Pen & wash sketch showing the 1850 extension as it was before the gable was removed in the ninteenth century.
Although panelling at the buttery end of the meeting room has been partly removed and a window into the courtyard added during the 1930’s there is little that has changed since the mid-seventeenth century. The floor is a mixture of medieval and more modern tiles. Most of the alterations centre on the service area behind the meeting room, where the buttery and pantry appear to have been amalgamated and the staircase has been repositioned and given its own structural unit. The original kitchen is now part of the restaurant bar area. Upstairs, the great chamber has been sub-divided and given a ceiling that conceals the central truss. From the adjacent car park it is possible to see the great out-built stack, which served the kitchen, and the jettied garderobe at the side of the stack.
The interior of the Hall is still furnished with its seventeenth century furniture and fittings. A portrait of Degory Watur (the Draper responsible for founding the almshouses) and his wife, dating from at least the early sixteenth century, hangs next to a ‘country’ portrait of Edward IV painted in 1660 by Thomas Francis and framed by Richard Ellis. The wainscot Master Chair is of similar date and workmanship. The floor is partly tiled with medieval tiles from the earlier Hall. The massive seventeen foot oak table with attendant benches were made by Francis Bowyer in the early sixteen-thirties. The remarkable chest press in ‘Laudian’ style was made in 1637 for the Drapers’ archives, and is a unique piece of furniture. In the buttery hangs the hatchment of the Company Arms dated 1625, as allowed in1585 by Richard Lee, Portcullis Herald, which are identical with those of the London Drapers’ Company
The wealth of Shrewsbury in the Elizabethan period is still evident in such fine buildings as Drapers Hall, the Market Hall in the Square, the Fellmongers Hall in Frankwell, the surviving timber-framed houses in the town built for prominent Drapers, and Trinity Chapel in St Mary’s Church. The source of all this prosperity was Welsh woollen cloth.