ON the night of May 10, 1941, the City of London was the object of the last large-scale air raid of the Blitz. Among the architectural casualties was Carpenters’ Hall, which was gutted when the gas mains on London Wall were ignited by a ‘land mine’. Fortunately, most of the Company’s treasures had been stored for safety in the vaults of the building and survived the blaze. The Victorian hall, designed in an Italian Renaissance style by the architect and liveryman of the Company, William Wilmer Pocock, and begun in 1876, was otherwise left a roofless ruin. It was only the second hall to have stood on this site since the 15th century, its much-adapted medieval predecessor having been damaged by fire in 1849.
The halls of the City Livery Companies suffered badly during the war and more than 30 were seriously damaged or destroyed. Repairing them was complicated by the shortage of materials, the byzantine operations of the War Damage Commission (which paid for war damage less dilapidations) and a licensing system for construction managed by the Ministry of Works. Even so, in some ways, these Livery Company rebuilding projects led the field in the post-war resurgence of London, just as they had done after the Great Fire in 1666.
Carpenters’ Hall is one of the best and most intriguing examples of this generation of buildings, being at once historically informed yet consciously contemporary. It occupies the shell of Pocock’s building, but without attempting to re-create it. This treatment creates striking juxtapositions of old and new and is in contrast to the mainstream of restored Livery Halls, most of which opted for reinstatement or complete reconstruction. No less remarkable, however, is the manner in which Carpenters’ Hall seeks to celebrate in architecture the spirit of the Company’s craft.
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