On this day in 1749 the Court ordered that the Company’s Arms be "cast in lead and affixed upon the several houses" it owned.
The Company had Barber-Surgeons' Hall and several houses on Monkwell Street together with property in other parts of London. Account books in the Company’s archive record the rents collected by the Renter Warden on properties in Mouse Alley in East Smithfield, in Holborn Bridge, in Coneyhoop Lane, in Lansdowne Road in North Kensington and in Leadenhall Street in the City.
One of the earliest documents we have, dated 2 Dec 1470, is a probate copy of surgeon Robert Ferbras’s Will. Ferbras bequeathed rents from property in the Parish of St. Mildred in the Poultry, in the Parish of St. Sepulchre East Smithfield and in the Parish of St. John Walbrook to his wife for the term of her life and afterwards to the Barber’s Company for the benefit of poor members.
More research is needed to find what happened to the properties owned by the Company and the people who lived and worked in them.
Image: the cast iron fireback given to the Company by the Honorary Curator, Rodger Whitelocke. The origins of this fireback are unknown, but an inventory of items lost when the Hall was destroyed in 1940 records a “wooden fireback die”. This suggests that there were multiple copies of the Company fireback presumably used in Barber-Surgeons' Hall and other properties owned by the Company to denote ownership just as the Arms on the outside of the buildings did in 1749.
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