Rowley’s
Monday, and my girlfriend and I went to Rowley’s, which I have always wanted to go to and have walked past hundreds of times. It has been on Jermyn Street since 1976, in what was once the Wall’s butcher’s shop, and the tiles on the walls are the butcher’s originals.
We had French onion soup, and it was honestly the best I have ever had, followed by steak frites. The steak came served on a flame-heated platter. Amazing. The house way is an entrecôte finished at the table, with Roquefort butter and as many fries as you can manage.
Further along Jermyn Street, on the front of Hackett, a blue plaque: Sir Isaac Newton lived here. He moved to the street in 1696, the year he went to the Royal Mint, living first at number 88 and then here at 87 until 1709. He arrived in the middle of the Great Recoinage, when the old hammered silver, clipped to the bone, was being called in and struck again as milled coin. The London County Council put the plaque on the old house in 1908, just before it was demolished, and the tablet underneath records that it went back up on the new building in 1915.
Merchant Taylors’ Hall
Then off to the Worshipful Company of International Bankers at Merchant Taylors’ Hall for their installation dinner, black tie with orders and decorations. By City standards the Company is young. It was founded in 2001 as the Guild of International Bankers, granted its livery in 2004, and stands 106th in the order of precedence. Its motto is A Natione ad Nationem, from nation to nation.
The hall belongs to a much older company. The Merchant Taylors have been on this site, between Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, since 1347. The Great Fire gutted the hall in 1666, incendiary bombs did much the same in September 1940, and it reopened in 1959. The Great Kitchen came through both, and has been in use since 1425.
Along the gallery runs the Merchant Taylors’ motto, Concordia parvae res crescunt, in harmony small things grow. Harmony has not always come easily. The Merchant Taylors and the Skinners quarrelled over which of them ranked sixth among the livery companies, until in 1484 the Lord Mayor, Robert Billesden, ordered them to swap every Easter. It is often given as the origin of being at sixes and sevens, though the phrase is older. This year, being an even one, the Merchant Taylors are seventh.
At the far end, the organ case carries the date 1722. Renatus Harris built it for St Dionis Backchurch, a Wren church on the corner of Fenchurch Street and Lime Street, demolished in 1878. The Company tracked down Harris’s pipes in 1965 and had Noel Mander rebuild the instrument here, where it was inaugurated the following year. Harris again, the day after his organ at St James’s.
On the wall above the gallery, a coat of arms I photographed because the lion on the right has a red bottom. At first glance it passes for the royal arms, but only the left half of the shield is the sovereign’s. The right half has blue lions rampant and, on ermine, three strung bows, which is Lyon and Bowes, quartered. These are the arms of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the royal arms impaled with her own, and the lion on the right is her sinister supporter, gold above and red below.
A lovely event, with a number of courses I cannot remember and a wine to go with each, and a violinist for musical entertainment. The new Master spoke in his robes. Mostly, though, it was the company. I saw many friends I have made through the livery, and I always enjoy these evenings as an opportunity to catch up with them.
We have now been to the hall a few times, and it remains stunning. Not that it would lose much grandeur over a few years, having stood for so many.
