In the early summer of 1832 a concrete raft was laid over the entire ground, to stabilize the riverbank, and fourteen of the most reputable building contractors in London were invited to tender for the structural shell or carcass. A tender from the firm of William and Lewis Cubitt was accepted and the shell was completed in 1833, the date being carved in Roman numerals, with the Company's arms, on the east front.

A contract to finish the interior of the Hall was agreed with Cubitts in 1834 and completed in the spring of 1835, with the architect supervising the ordering of fixtures and furnishings. The Hall was in use from June 1835, and interior decoration was added in 1840.

The many changes in interior decoration have, over the years, reflected changes in English taste. In 1840 Roberts aimed for the restrained warmth of tawny and ivory tones, with delicate gilding, which characterized the King's Library at the British Museum and was suited to the lighting of early Victorian oil lamps and gas chandeliers. In 1865 the architect Owen Jones demonstrated at the Hall his theory that the ancient Greeks had used intense blues, reds and golds appropriate to the powerful light of Victorian gas sunburners. In 1898, when electric lighting was installed, redecoration was supervised by George Bodley, the eminent church architect and member of the Court of the Fishmongers' Company, and it was he who introduced much darker late Victorian colouring.

In 1926, in an attempt to lift the Victorian darkness and revive Regency elegance, the architect H.S. Goodhart-Rendel brought in the brighter colouring needed when Adelaide House, then the City's tallest office building, was built opposite - standing in the Hall's light from the east. Decoration since the last war has been more in keeping with the vision of the 1830's and 1920's than with the 1860's and 1890's, for the Victorians were somewhat shortsighted about the Hall's original character as a bright precise building from the time of William IV.

On 9th September 1940, during the Second World War, bombs fell on all sides of the Hall which caught fire and suffered great damage. Whilst the riverside range was gutted and the roof over the grand staircase destroyed, most of Roberts' essential structure remained and, fortunately, most of the Company's records and treasures had already been removed from the Hall.

Shortages of materials during and after the war years were to prolong restoration but, under the architect H. Austen Hall, this was completed in fourteen years.

The private wharf which the Company and its tenants enjoyed before 1666 and between 1835 and 1975 has, again, become part of a public pedestrian quay, as it was between 1669 and 1827. The short history of Fishmongers' Hall contained in this booklet is based on "The Halls of the Fishmongers' Company" by Dr. Priscilla Metcalf printed in 1977 by Phillimore Publishing

Current as at August 08, 2003