Putting in a Good Word

The home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers Established in 1403, the Stationers' Company was long responsible for regulating the printing industry. Lucy Denton looks at the history of this remarkable institution and its livery hall

- Lucy Denton

THE year 1631 was not a good one for Robert Barker. He and his associate, Martin Lucas, Royal Printers with an exclusive licence to publish Bibles, managed to release an edition of the text that left out the word ‘not’ from the Seventh Commandment. The exhortation ‘thou shalt commit adultery’ bestowed on the edition the popular name of the ‘Wicked Bible’. Whether an outrageous act of sabotage or a lapse in attention to detail, this ungodly endorsement led to a summons to the Star Chamber, a stiff monetary penalty and the humiliation of Barker, who was ruined.

Together with his father, Christopher, another leading publisher who owned several printing presses in the capital, Barker was a member of what is now known as the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers. The livery company was founded in 1403 by petition of the Lord Mayor as a guild of booksellers, bookbinders, illustrators of manuscripts and purveyors of parchments. It was subsequently granted a Royal Charter by Mary Tudor in 1557, which established the Stationers as regulators of the printing industry. The Company is named after the static ‘stationery’ stalls once set up around St Paul’s Cathedral. Associations with its churchyard, as well as Paternoster Row, are historically deeply rooted, but the book trades here were mostly wiped out in the 1940s by the Blitz.

The present Stationers’ Hall occupies a site halfway up the north side of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City. Its congregation of buildings post-dates the Great Fire of 1666 and is screened from the street by a line of architecturally variegated Victorian and modern blocks packed in alongside Wren’s 1670s church of St Martin’s. The observant pedestrian might briefly glimpse views of it through an archway on Ave Maria Lane or along a narrow alley called Stationers Hall Court. Most pass by oblivious.