livery hall, club
3 Cloth St, London, EC1A 7LD
Farmers and Fletchers' Hall is one of the 44 Livery Halls in the City of London. The Hall is the home to both the Worshipful Company of Fletchers, an ancient Livery Company and the Farmers, a modern Livery Company. The Worshipful Company of Fletchers will open it's doors to show members of the public some of the modern work of the Fletchers Livery, it's traditions and heritage.
Barbican
Farringdon
56
Disabled Lift
While the Fletchers of the City of London are this year celebrating the 650th anniversary of their existence, the Company has no exact foundation date. At some point before 7 March 1371 the leading men of the two crafts of the Bowyers and Fletchers, who had previously formed one association, agreed that the two crafts should separate completely, and that henceforth no one individual should be allowed to make and sell both bows and arrows. A majority of the membership of the two crafts readily agreed with this, but on 7 March the leading men of the two crafts appeared at Guildhall before the Mayor and Aldermen to complain of four named individuals – John Patyn, Robert atte Verne, Richard Prodhomme and John Lyon – who had continued to make and sell both bows and arrows.
In the days that followed, the quartet of ‘renegades’ appeared at Guildhall, and explained that they needed longer to wind up their affairs, as they not only had remaining stock and unfinished articles belonging to both crafts but were also training apprentices in the skills pertaining to both. This seemed reasonable to the Mayor and Aldermen, who gave the four until Easter (which – much like this year – fell in the first week of April) to sort out their outstanding business and to decide which of the two crafts they wished to join. Patyn, Prodhomme and Lyon seem to have done so, but atte Verne took rather longer, and only decided to become a Bowyer in August of the same year. Nor was this the end of the affair: atte Verne eventually changed his mind once more, and by the autumn of 1386 had risen to sufficient prominence in the Fletchers’ trade to be elected one of the fledgling company’s wardens.
The prohibition on combining the drafts of Bowyers and fletchers came to be regarded as the first of the Fletchers’ Company’s ordinances, many more of which were enacted over the course of the 15th century. Unlike the many other companies, the Fletchers did not have their rights enshrined in a Royal Charter. Into the 21st century they remained a Company ‘by prescription’, that is, they relied upon the authority of the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of London for the enforcement of their regulations and ordinances, sharing any fines imposed on rule-breakers with the City’s Chamber.
