ABSTRACT
In 1931 Dr Frances Consitt, who had been working for several years on a history of the Company based upon its early records covering the Middle Ages and the Tudor period, completed her task. Arrangements were made for publication by Oxford University Press and the book appeared in 1933 under the title The London Weavers' Company from the Twelfth Century to the close of the Sixteenth Century. l
At about the same time the Court of Assistants, together with certain prominent members of the Livery, met to consider the desirability of bringing up to date the Company's By-laws, which had not been revised since 1737 (under circumstances described in Chapter 13 above). New By-laws and Ordinances were drafted by Sir John Miles, a member of the Court and a former Upper Bailiff, and these were duly confirmed in Common Hall on 26 July 1937, just two hundred years and four months after the old By-laws and Ordinances had been 'approved, allowed and confirmed' in the reign of George 1 1 . 2
The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, with its imminent threat of aerial attacks, raised many problems for all the City Livery Companies, not the least of which was the protection of their priceless historic possessions-their halls, ancient documents, antique pictures, furniture, and plate. At first, from September 1939 to May 1941, the Weavers were fortunate, but on the night of 10-11 May 1941 Weavers' Hall was seriously damaged by incendiary bombs which fell on the adjoining buildings, no. 21 Basinghall Street, and the premises a t the rear. The Company's Surveyor reported that the
rooms in the 'back part of Weavers' Hall from the rear ground floor and first floor upwards . . . were burnt out with all the contents'. Some relics of the old Hall were completely destroyed, including the seventeenth-century carved over-mantel and panelling, and the seventeenth-century carvings on the staircase, but the old carved doors at the head of the staircase, which were made in 1669 after the Great Fire, survived.3 The five royal portraits-Queen Elizabeth I, Charles 11, James 11, William I11 and Queen Anne-which, before the war, were hung in the Guildhall Library, had been taken to a 'place of greater safety' shortly after the beginning of the war, otherwise they, too, might have been destroyed in the 'blitzy.* It was even more fortunate that the Company's ancient charters and records were neither damaged nor destroyed. However, the Court of Assistants prudently decided to run no further risks and the documents were soon afterwards taken out of London, part to New College, Oxford, and part to Glebe House, Knebworth, the house of Dr G. R. Y. Rad~liffe.~ During the last phase of the war the Almshouses a t Wanstead were damaged by a rocket bomb, which made it necessary for a number of the almsfolk to seek temporary shelter with relatives or friends. Fortunately there were no casualties.
