Published in Windlesora 07 (1988)
© WLHG
Windsor’s historic Guildhall was built during a time of political upheaval. The foundation stone was laid on 5th September 1687 when James II was King. Then followed the ‘Revolution’ of 1688 when Catholic James was driven from the throne and the Protestant William of Orange and his wife Mary (daughter of James) were made King and Queen. James was last at Windsor on 17th November 1688 but left for Salisbury the next day. By that time he knew that William had landed at Torbay. The Prince advanced with the minimum of opposition and on 14th December reached Windsor on his way to London. So the townspeople saw one king depart and his successor arrive within the space of a month.
This simple narrative of events, however, leaves more unsaid than said so far as Windsor is concerned. The Windsor Council that ordered the building of the new Guildhall had an unusual status. It was certainly not elected. It was not even the ‘self-perpetuating oligarchy’ by which the existing Council had for generations virtually filled vacancies by co-option. It had in fact been appointed by the King under the Charter of 1685. Both the royal brothers (Charles and James) had made it their policy to control the municipalities by means of nominees. Charles II had ‘called in’ Windsor’s charter (as he did those of many other towns) at the close of his reign. The new charter was issued in the name of James II only a month after Charles’ own death. The rank and file members of the Council were much the same. The majority of the aldermen, however, were royal nominees appointed for the first time. Several of them (as we shall see later) held high positions in the Castle. One, James Graham, was Mayor when the building of the Guildhall began. After the change of Government the Charter of 1685 was annulled. Only one of the new aldermen, Theodore Randue, the future benefactor of the Free School, returned to the Council.
William III and Mary assumed the reins of government early in 1689. By this time the building of the Guildhall was well advanced and the Council adjusted itself to the changed situation. The new King and Queen were proclaimed amid the customary festivities and rejoicing and on 4th November the London Gazette reported: “This day being H. M.’s birth-day, the Mayor, Aldermen, Bailiffs and Burgesses of this borough, about six of the clock in the evening assembled at the new Guildhall of this corporation, where a handsome treat was prepared for them, at which were present all the officers Quartered on the Town, where they drank healths to their Majesties and the Royal Family, the windows of the Town Hall be inall the time illuminated, the Bells Ringing and Musick playing, with Bonfires and all other Demonstrations of Joy and Loyalty suitable to the occasion.”
So just over two years after laying the foundation stone the Guildhall was ready for use. The first Council meeting recorded as being held in the new Guildhall took place on 23rd December, 1689 and regularly from that time on, although it was not until 17th October in the following year that a Council Minute orders that “the new building over the Corn Market be made and appointed the Guildhall of this borough”.
The Guildhall was similar to others built at about the same period those at Abingdon and Wallingford are good examples. It replaced both the former town hall in Church Street and the old Elizabethan Market House (this is a prominent feature in Norden’s View of 1607), which was demolished in 1687 to clear the way for the new building. The open space under the new Hall was used as a market and, interestingly the name of ‘Market House’ still continued to be used. In 1687 also the ancient market cross north of the present Guildhall was removed.
The new Guildhall was designed by Sir Thomas Fitz (or Fitch), a Surveyor of the Cinque Ports and it was he who superintended the building work until his death in January 1689. Sir Christopher Wren, born a Windsor man, son of a Dean of Windsor, and also a colleague of Fitz as a Royal Surveyor, was entrusted with the completion of the building. The name of Wren is popularly associated with the story (of which more later) of the four columns which stop short of supporting the Guildhall Chamber, but there cannot have been a great deal left to be done at the end of the sixteen months during which Fitz had been in charge.
The general design of the Guildhall was not unlike that of the previous Market House, but whereas that was timber-framed, the new Guildhall was of stone and incomparably grander. Like its predecessor, however, it was basically an upper room, supported upon pillars, with provision for a corn exchange or corn market in the open colonnaded area below. The primary use of the Guildhall chamber was for meetings of the Council, though over the years it served many other purposes – a Court Room and a room for civic and other functions.
Internally, its form was that of the double cube (about 54 feet by 27) which had become fashionable in the seventeenth century. (That at Wilton House near Salisbury, with its van Dykes, is one of the most illustrious examples). Before long the walls of the Guildhall chamber were decorated with a series of royal portraits. An inventory of 1773 lists twelve royal and other portraits, most of which are still there.
Access was by an external stairway. The Council Minutes of 20th February 1689 record: “Upon a debate this day whether the Stairway to the new Market House should be open with Bannisters or made close the latter is thought more convenient and ordered accordingly.” It was not until 1829 that the extension was constructed for internal staircases as well as a vestibule and new rooms including the Committee Room and the Mayor’s Parlour.
Much work was done in the vicinity of the Guildhall. The area had to be adequately cleared – though the Market Cross House survived and stands cheek by jowl in picturesque juxtaposition to the new Hall. On the Guildhall building itself two royal statues were eventually added, one of Queen Anne on the northern end in 1706 and a second of her husband, Prince George of Denmark, on the southern end – the latter set up at the expense of Sir Christopher Wren.
The building cost £2,006/14/4d. Among the prominent subscribers were several of the new aldermen. One of the first subscriptions recorded in the Chamberlain’s Accounts is of £100 from “James Graham, Esq. our present Mayor”. He was one of the royal nominees, Keeper of the King’s Privy Purse, Deputy-lieutenant of the Castle. He had the special confidence of James II, but contrived to some extent to win the good graces of William III and lived well into the eighteenth century, although his association with Windsor was short-lived. Graham’s predecessor as Mayor, who also subscribed £100, was the notorious William Chiffinch, closet-keeper to Charles II. “His employment” says one biographer, “showed him to be of disreputable nature as time went on, for he was a timeserver and libertine, wasteful, unscrupulous, open to bribery and flattery, ingratiating himself into the confidence of courtiers and mistresses, delighting in intrigue of every kind.” There were at least two other highly placed officers from the Castle among the aldermen – Charles Potts, Deputy Governor of the Castle, Mayor in 1688-89, and Theodore Randue, housekeeper at the Castle, who also gave £100. Another notable subscriber was Dr. William Child, organist at St George’s Chapel, who in addition to subscribing £50 towards the relief of Windsor’s poor, gave £20.
There was thus a close link between Town and Castle at the time of the building of the Guildhall. Several of the leading craftsman employed in the building were also leading craftsmen at the Castle. John Clarke, the master-mason, was master-mason at the Castle. Matthew Reeve, plumber, was master-plumber at the Castle. Several of the craftsmen became members of the Council and in three instances at least attained the mayoralty (John Clarke, Mayor 1709; Jeremy Bennett, iron-worker, Mayor 1711; Richard Hill, joiner, Mayor 1723 and 1729). The names of others of the craftsmen and workmen appears in the records. Most notable were William and John Davis, who were responsible for much of the ironwork; it was John who constructed the famous clock in the Curfew Tower.
Apart from those aldermen who were nominated by the Crown, the Council was a typical cross-section of Windsor tradesmen, with a sprinkling of professional men. Moses Bruch, Mayor in 1690, was a doctor, Samuel Gilman and John Bruch were apothecaries, John Pemberton, a barber surgeon. There was also at least one of each of the following: joiner, plumber, butcher, carpenter, waterman, baker, brewer, vintner, goldsmith, bricklayer, farrier.
Windsor has no more cherished story than that of the four columns in the Corn Exchange which stop short of the ceiling they are presumed to support. Did the Council doubt the stability of the structure and insist that Wren provide additional columns? Did Wren, annoyed that his professional skill had been questioned, show his contempt by deliberately leaving the gaps? The spaces between the tops of the columns and the ceiling are undoubtedly there.
Yet there is no relevant reference in the contemporary records such as the Chamberlain’s Accounts or the Hall Book. This is not necessarily conclusive evidence one way or the other. But there is no reference either in eighteenth century literature such as Pote’s Les Delices de Windsor or in the carefully written and informative guide books of Charles Knight Snr. John Stoughton in his Windsor: A History and Description of the Castle and Town (1862) makes a passing reference to the story, but includes the qualifying phrase “it is said that. . .” – he obviously too knew of no documentary evidence. A later, more interesting reference, comes in the Minutes of Evidence taken before Cecil M. Chapman, Assistant Commissioner, Royal Commission of Market Rights and Tolls (1888). On 12th December the Town Clerk, George Henry Long, answering the Commissioner’s questions, refers to the story and continues: “About 20 or 30 years ago some repairs had to be done below [the Guildhall], and when they came to take away the plastering, they found that those pillars did not support the room by two inches”. Perhaps, buried in the files of the Windsor and Eton Express is a reference to this discovery but it is unlikely to add anything. So there we must leave it.
What recent restorations of the Guildhall have revealed is that the main supporting beam for the Guildhall Chamber is the solid trunk of a single tree, still in perfect condition after three hundred years. This again raises some intriguing questions. Mr Gordon Cullingham, who as Borough Surveyor to the former Windsor Council was intimately concerned with the maintenance of the Guildhall, has brought the following to my notice: “At the end of the seventeenth century white pine trees were imported from New England. They were tall – as much as 125 feet or more; they were straight; they were sometimes 3 feet or more in diameter. Already they had been used to provide masts for the ships of the growing English navy. No wood so light and strong could be found in Europe in such great lengths. Before long the pines were being carried to England in special ‘mast ships’, built with large stern ports for loading timbers over 100 feet long.”
By 1691 the demand was becoming so great that the Crown began to reserve the best mast trees – all those over 24 inches in diameter and located within three miles of water – but the Crown had imported white pines for some years before this. Was the Guildhall tree one of them? If it was, it provided further evidence of the close association between Town and Castle in the building of the Guildhall.
It is frustrating that the contemporary records leave so many questions unanswered. They do not give us the inside story of Wren’s extra four columns. They do not record the origin of the great tree that provided the foundation of the Guildhall Chamber. But it is certainly not far-fetched to point to the relevance of circumstantial evidence.
So the Guildhall came to be built. There have been alterations. There have been restorations. There have been threats. The Windsor and Eton Express put forward the view in the 1840s that it would be better to demolish the building and erect a new Guildhall more in harmony with the architecture of the Castle. Sir Christopher Wren, it was said, had “no perception of the beauty of Gothic architecture”. These are not, however, part of our present story. The Guildhall has survived three hundred years, dominating the High Street and, in the dignity and beauty of the Guildhall Chamber, providing a focus for civic pride.
Raymond South
Windsor Local History Group 