GUILDFORD 



3734 



GUILDHALL 



any organization, outside their 

 own. Trade was expanding. The 

 old towns were decaying, and in- 

 dustry was shifting to new centres 

 where the restrictions of the guild 

 did not apply. The expenses of 

 those still working in guilds were 

 heavy, while the value of member- 

 ship steadily decreased. With the 

 marked development of a purely 

 commercial spirit in the 15th 

 century, men wanted greater free- 

 dom to acquire wealth for them- 

 selves, while with the new ideas ol 

 individualism which spread in the 

 16th century the general welfare 

 of the community was forgotten. 

 In the confiscation of the pro- 

 perty of the religious guilds under 

 Edward VI, the craft guilds, or 

 companies, also suffered by the 

 loss at least of those funds which 

 had accumulated for purposes now 

 officially regarded as superstitions. 

 In the 20th century the word was 

 used for a certain class of trade 

 unions, guilds of bank clerks, for 

 instance. Somewhat different were 

 the building guilds, consisting of 

 representatives of the various 

 classes of workers in that industry. 

 See Housing. 



Bibliography. The Old Guilds of 

 England, F. Armitage, 1919 ; Guilds 

 in the Middle Ages, G. Reynard, 

 Eng. trans. D. Terry, 1919; The 

 Parish Guilds of Mediaeval England, 

 H. F. Westlake, 1919. 



Guildford. Borough and mar- 

 ket town of Surrey, for some pur- 

 poses still the county town. It is 29 

 m from London, 

 having stations 

 on the L. & S.W., 

 L.B. & S.C., and 

 S.E. & C. Rlys., 

 and stands on 

 the Wey. In the 

 High Street are 

 Abbot's Hospi- 

 tal, a Jacobean 

 building founded in 1619 as an 

 almshouse by Archbishop Abbot, 

 and famous for its oak ; the gram- 

 mar school of the 16th century, 

 with its library and chained books , 

 the Angel Inn with its vaults, and 

 other historic buildings. The town 

 has the keep of its Norman castle, a 

 museum, county hall, county hos- 

 pital, and institute. The guildhall 

 is a brick and timber erection of the 

 late 17th century. The chief 

 churches are S. Mary's, mainly of 

 the 12th century, with some inter- 

 esting architectural features ; S. 

 Nicolas, rebuilt about 1875 but 

 containing the old Loseley Chapel 

 with its memorials ; and Trinity 

 Church, rebuilt in the 18th century. 

 The castle grounds are now public 

 gardens. The town has a trade in 

 agricultural produce, and is a rail- 

 way junction. Other industries are 

 flour milling and brewing. 



Guildford arms 



Guildhall, 

 LONDON. Home 

 of the City Corpo- 

 ration. Situated 

 at the end of 

 King Street, 

 Cheapside, be- 

 tween Alderman- 

 bury and Basing- 

 hall Street, it was 

 built, 1411-35, 

 approximately on 

 the site of an 

 earlier structure. 

 Most of the me- 



Guildford was 

 an important 

 place before the 

 Norman Con- 

 quest. A castle 

 was built here , it 

 was represented in 

 Parliament from 

 1295 to 1885. In 

 the Middle Ages 

 it was a centre of 

 the cloth trade, 

 and its govern- 

 ment was in the 

 hands of the local 

 guild. Market day, 

 Tues. Pop. 24,927. 



Guildford. Town of Western 

 Australia, in Swan district. It is 

 situated on the rly. 9 m. N.E. of 

 Perth, and was one of the earliest 

 settlements in the original Swan 

 River Colony. Pop. 3,200. 



Guildhall. In medieval archi- 

 tecture, a hall for the meeting of 

 the guild merchants. Its origin 

 was a roofed booth for collecting 

 market tolls. As the local mer- 

 chant organizations developed, a 

 room for business purposes was 

 added, generally built over the 

 toll booth, and the practice of 

 placing the council chamber of the 

 guildhall on an upper floor, with 

 access to the market place, was re- 

 tained long after the original rough 

 toll booth had become a structure 

 of stone or brick. 



The guild system was developed 

 earlier in Flanders and N. Germany 

 than elsewhere. Hence the large 

 number of historic guildhalls in 

 the chief cities and towns of 

 these territories, each identified 

 with the staple trade of the locality. 

 In London, the halls of the separate 

 guilds were and are known as 

 Company Halls. On the Continent, 

 the guild gradually extended its 

 authority to the affairs of the town 

 itself, and the guildhall became the 

 town hall. Owing doubtless to 

 the London example, the municipal 

 buildings of York, Bristol, and 

 other large towns are commonly 

 called guildhalls. /SeeChippenham. 



Guildford, Surrey. Ruins of the Norman castle. 

 Above, the High Street, looking north-east 



Valentine & Frith 



dieval timber work was destroyed 

 by the Great Fire (q.v.) of 1666, but 

 parts of porch and hall, typical 

 of the Perpendicular period, re- 

 main, while the crypt or under- 

 croft escaped almost unscathed. 

 Wren replaced the open roof with a 

 flat ceiling. The S. front was 

 restored by George Dance, jun., in 

 1789, but a complete restoration 

 was not undertaken until 1864, 

 when Sir Horace Jones modelled 

 the open oak roof on that destroyed 

 in 1666, made a number of other 

 improvements, and crowned the 

 structure with a metal spire. The 

 E. half of the crypt has fine shafts 

 of Purbeck marble and stone vault- 

 ing, and when parts of the brick 

 arches of the W. half, put up by 

 Wren, were removed in 1909-10, 

 it appeared that this section was 

 identical with the E. part. 



The Great Hall, 152 ft. by 49Jft., 

 and 89 ft. in height, is used for 

 the election of the lord mayor 

 and sheriffs and M.P.'s for the city, 

 and the state banquets and enter- 

 tainments of the corporation. The 

 lord mayor's annual banquet has 

 been held here since 1501. A 15th 

 century window in the S.W. corner 

 was uncovered in 1909. The walls 

 were cleared of paint and plaster in 

 1914, when interesting evidence of 

 the fire was disclosed. The hall 

 contains a number of monuments, 

 busts and portraits, and the giant 

 figures of Gog and Magog (q.v. ). 



