Fishmongers' Hall (sometimes shortened in common parlance to Fish Hall) is aGrade II* listed building adjacent toLondon Bridge.[1] It is the headquarters of theWorshipful Company of Fishmongers, one of the 111livery companies of theCity of London. The Hall is situated inBridge ward.
The first recorded Fishmongers' Hall was built in 1310. A new hall, on the present site, was bequeathed to the Company in 1434. Together with 43 other livery halls, it was destroyed in theGreat Fire of London in 1666 and a replacement hall designed by the architect Edward Jerman opened in 1671. This hall by Jerman was demolished to facilitate the construction ofthe new London Bridge in 1827. The Fishmongers' fourth hall was designed byHenry Roberts (although his assistant, later the celebratedSir Gilbert Scott, made the drawings) and built byWilliam Cubitt & Company, opening in 1834.[2] After severe bomb damage duringthe Blitz, Fishmongers' Hall was restored by Austen Hall (of Whinney, Son & Austen Hall) and reopened in 1951.[3]
The collection in Fishmongers' Hall includes:
The hall also holds a dagger that at one time was popularly believed to have been used byLord Mayor Walworth to killWat Tyler in 1381, and was said to have been given to the City armoury by the king. However, there was no foundation to this legend, as the weapon was in the armoury long beforehand where it was used to represent the sword of St Paul.[6][7]
On 29 November 2019,Usman Khan, a prisoner attending aCambridge University conference on prisoner rehabilitation at the hall, wearing what turned out to be a fakesuicide vest, threatened to blow up the hall.[8] He subsequently stabbed a number of people in the hall, and two of them – Jack Merritt, a 25-year-old Cambridge University employee, and Saskia Jones, a 23-year-old volunteer – died of their injuries.[9][10] Khan was wrestled to the ground on the bridge by members of the public, before being shot dead by armed policemen; a Polish man used a pole as a weapon to fight off the attacker, while another man used anarwhal tusk which he had taken from the wall inside Fishmongers' Hall.[11]
51°30′34″N0°05′16″W / 51.50939°N 0.08764°W /51.50939; -0.08764