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St Mary's Guildhall

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St Mary's Hall is a municipal building in Bayley Lane in Coventry, West Midlands, England. It is a Grade I listed building.[1]

St Mary's Guildhall
The entrance to St Mary's Hall in Bayley Lane, Coventry.
LocationCoventry, West Midlands
Coordinates52°24′28″N 1°30′28″W / 52.4077°N 1.5078°W / 52.4077; -1.5078
Built1342
Listed Building – Grade I
Designated5 February 1955
Reference no.1116402
St Mary's Guildhall is located in West Midlands county
St Mary's Guildhall
Location of St Mary's Guildhall in West Midlands county

History

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The archway entrance to the guildhall in 1810
 
The entrance in 2012

The building was built in the medieval style between 1340 and 1342 and much altered and extended in 1460.[1]

The guildhall originally served as the headquarters of the merchant guild of St Mary,[2] and subsequently of the united guilds of the Holy Trinity, St Mary, St John the Baptist and St Katherine,[3] which merged in 1392.[4]

Following the suppression of the chantries and religious guilds under King Edward VI in 1547, for a time it served as the city's armoury and as its treasury (until 1822),[5] as well as the headquarters for administration for the city council (until the Council House opened in 1920).[6]

In November 1569, following the Catholic Rising of the North, Mary, Queen of Scots was rushed south from Tutbury Castle to Coventry.[7][8] Elizabeth I sent a letter, instructing the people of Coventry to look after Mary.[9] She suggested that Mary be held somewhere secure, such as Coventry Castle. However, by that time the castle was too decayed and Mary was instead first held at the Bull Inn, Smithford Street before being moved to the Mayoress's Parlour in St Mary's Guildhall.[10] Following the defeat of the rebels, Mary was once more sent north to Chatsworth in May 1570.[11]

On 3 April 1604 Princess Elizabeth Stuart and her ladies rode from Coombe Abbey to Coventry. She heard a sermon in St Michael's Church and dined in St Mary's Hall.[12] Prince Henry Stuart rode to Coventry from Leicester on 20 August 1612 and had supper in St Mary's Hall. He stayed at a house in Little Park street.[13] Later in the 1600s, the Guildhall was used as armoury during the English Civil War.[4]

In the 1750s, the medieval flooring was replaced with a sprung wooden floor for dancing.[4]

In January 1847, formerly enslaved person and famous American abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a lecture at St. Mary's Guildhall during his speaking tour of Great Britain and Ireland.[14] The crowd of a ‘sea of upturned faces' was noted by Douglass, who said that this 'filled him with hope that the day was not far distant when there would be not a slave in all the world’.[15] The Frederick Douglass in Coventry Project was launched in 2020 by staff and students of Coventry University to promote the cities civil rights heritage.[16]

In the 1861 the Guildhall operated as a soup kitchen.[17]

Restoration

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George Eld, mayor of Coventry (1834–5) was an antiquarian who encouraged appreciation of Coventry's ancient buildings. He initiated the restoration of the fourteenth-century interior of the Mayoress' parlour.[18]

The stained-glass window in the north of the Great Hall was restored in 1893[19] and a Muniment Room was added in 1894.[20]

Restoration work by the council received the approval of the committee of the Coventry City Guild in 1930. Improvements had included the repair of the door at the north entrance to the crypt and providing glass and grilles in the windows of the fore crypt. Outside the crumbling exterior stonework was stabilized.[21]

Further restoration work began in 2020,[22] with £5.6m from a council Cultural Capital Investment Programme spent on the project.[23] The work was completed in July 2022. It includes a lift to provide wheelchair access to the first floor, 360 degrees panoramic views of all the rooms on digital tour tablets and a medieval kitchen that was revealed to visitors for the first time in over a century.[24]

The building also has a vaulted undercroft[25] which is now used as a tea room called Tales of Tea.[26]

Artworks

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Lady Godiva statue in the Guildhall.

The building retains a collection of royal portraits from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, arms and armour and fine stained glass. A marble statue of Lady Godiva by William Calder Marshall[27] is housed in an oriel with fragmented stained-glass windows off the Great hall.[19]

Notable paintings include a portrait by John Shackleton of King George I[28] and a portrait by Godfrey Kneller of Queen Caroline of Ansbach.[29] In 1861, the artist David Gee painted The Godiva Procession Leaving St Mary's Hall, which is now on display nearby in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.[30]

 
Ceiling and tapestry in the Guildhall.

The guildhall also houses one of the country's most important and unique medieval tapestries,[31] the Coventry Tapestry, which was created for the Guildhall somewhere between 1505 and 1515.[32] The couple portrayed in the tapestry are thought to be King Henry VI and Queen Margaret of Anjou,[33] alongside other noble figures including Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury and Lady Buckingham.[34] The tapestry and the stained glass window above it are considered one of the last shrines to the posthumous cult of Henry VI in England,[35][36] which rivalled even the cult of the martyr Thomas Becket.[37]

During Coventry's year as European City of Culture in 2019 a conference was held about the legacy and significant of the tapestry. The St Mary’s Hall Coventry Tapestry: Weaving the Threads Together book will be launched in September 2024, featuring proceedings from the conference and new images.[38]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Historic England. "St Mary's Hall, Coventry (1116402)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
  2. ^ Kemp, David (12 January 1992). The Pleasures and Treasures of Britain: A Discerning Traveller's Companion. Dundurn. p. 233. ISBN 978-1-55002-159-2.
  3. ^ Gloag, John (24 October 2022). The Englishman's Chair: Origins, Design, and Social History of Seat Furniture in England. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-77605-8.
  4. ^ a b c "Timeline of Coventry Medieval history | St Mary's Guildhall". St Marys Guild Hall. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  5. ^ Fox (1957), pp. 96, 101, 175.
  6. ^ Historic England. "Council House, Coventry (1342927)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
  7. ^ "Mary, Queen of Scots: England". Marie Stuart Society. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
  8. ^ "Step inside Coventry's Guildhall". BBC Coventry and Warwickshire. BBC. 19 October 2009. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  9. ^ Pearce, Matt. "Mary Queen of Scots". www.stmarysguildhall.co.uk. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
  10. ^ Leader, John Daniel. (1880) Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity. Sheffield: Leader & Sons. pp. 100–103.
  11. ^ Shanette, Heather. "Mary, Queen of Scots: Residences 1568-1587". Elizabeth I. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
  12. ^ John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1828), p. 429.
  13. ^ John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 2 (London, 1828), p. 459.
  14. ^ de Souza, Naomi (9 November 2020). "How Coventry helped buy freedom of runaway slave and civil rights leader". Coventry Live. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  15. ^ "Coventry University celebrates city's links with American civil rights hero Frederick Douglass". www.coventry.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  16. ^ "Coventry University celebrates city's links with American civil rights hero Frederick Douglass". Coventry University. Retrieved 16 September 2024.
  17. ^ "St Mary's Guildhall". Coventry City Centre. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  18. ^ Potier, Joanne (23 September 2004). "'Eld, George (1791–1862)'". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/8606. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  19. ^ a b Siddles, Rosemary. "A Colourful Look into the Past: The Guildhall's Oriel Window". St Marys Guild Hall. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  20. ^ "Visit the medieval St Marys Guildhall in Coventry". St Marys Guild Hall. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  21. ^ The Times, News in Brief, 16 April 1930
  22. ^ "St Mary's Guildhall | Let's Talk Coventry". letstalk.coventry.gov.uk. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  23. ^ "Fourteenth Century St Mary's Guildhall in Coventry reopens to public". BBC News. 22 July 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  24. ^ Brown, Ellie (26 July 2022). "The ancient Cov building 'like something out of Game of Thrones'". Coventry Live. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  25. ^ Monckton, Linda (5 July 2017). Coventry: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in the City and its Vicinity: Volume 33. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-351-57087-9.
  26. ^ Pearce, Matt. "Home". www.stmarysguildhall.co.uk. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
  27. ^ Marshall, William Calder. "Godiva". Art UK. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  28. ^ Shackleton, John. "George I (1660–1727)". Art UK. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  29. ^ Kneller, Godfrey. "Queen Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach (1683–1737)". Art UK. Retrieved 24 August 2020.
  30. ^ Reader offers: Coventry Telegraph 26 November 2001
  31. ^ Sheen, Rosita (31 October 2019). Tapestries. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78442-381-0.
  32. ^ Pearce, Matt. "The Coventry Tapestry". www.stmarysguildhall.co.uk. Retrieved 27 August 2019.
  33. ^ "Coventry tapestry: 'Internationally important' work restored". BBC News. 4 March 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  34. ^ McGrory, David (15 November 2015). Secret Coventry. Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4456-4710-4.
  35. ^ McGrory, David (15 April 2018). A-Z of Coventry: Places-People-History. Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-4456-7489-6.
  36. ^ Keep, Laura. "St Mary's Guildhall and Coventry's saintly King Henry VI". St Marys Guild Hall. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
  37. ^ Campbell, Thomas P. (2007). Henry VIII and the Art of Majesty: Tapestries at the Tudor Court. Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. ISBN 978-0-300-12234-3.
  38. ^ "The St Mary's Hall Coventry Tapestry: Weaving the Threads Together Book Launch". Visit Coventry. Retrieved 15 September 2024.
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