Court Meeting and Common Hall held at Haberdashers' Hall - 12 April 2017

Court Meeting

Our meetings and the lunch that followed were held at Haberdashers’ Hall. We had a very full morning divided into two halves. The first was the Court Meeting held for the first time with Liverymen present in order to further inform the Livery on the range of issues we cover, on how decisions are made and who makes them. During the Court meeting we formally installed Fiona Sedgwick as our new Clerk who commenced her duties on the 1st April, and presented to our immediate past Clerk a cheque from all the Livery in recognition of his ten years’ service. We also admitted three new Liverymen to the Livery – Nigel Halliday, Revd Michael Scotchmer and our immediate past Clerk.

The Master asked the Court to note the death of David Hubert’s twin brother, who was a Liveryman until quite recently. Our thoughts have been and will continue to be with David. The Court was informed that a donation has been made which is to be utilised on a project connected to the Needle Museum. The Industry Committee will lead discussion together with the Charity Committee regarding how the donation is to be spent. Ken Allen, our new link to the Museum, will have an important role in helping the Committees decide.

Each Committee chair reported to the Court on business transacted since the last Court meeting.

Common Hall

This was only the second time in living memory that Common Hall has taken place. We intend to hold it on a regular but not frequent basis in future.

Common Hall developed from an early assembly of citizens, termed a congregation, which itself is thought to be a survival of the ancient Folkroot – a pre conquest general assembly of people of a city.

In the City of London originally all Freemen were entitled to attend such assemblies at the Guildhall, but apparently they became too large in number even for the Guildhall, so since 1467 the admission of Masters and Wardens of Livery Companies attended instead. This was the first step in the direction of organising the assembly as it is today for the election of the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs. Not all Liveries have continued the tradition of Common Hall in their Companies, and those do so have very different formats. We have slightly changed our format for today since we did it in past master Sue Kent’s year and I would be interested in any feedback you may wish to offer.

We commenced the meeting by our Clerk taking a roll call of all present – 56 in total.

Four individuals; a Plastic Reconstruction Surgeon, an A&E Nurse Consultant, a Royal School of Needlework student and a Lt in the PWRR, all of whom are beneficiaries of a Livery award, spoke briefly about the impact of their award on their working lives. They were all impressive, inspirational and greatly reassured us that we are utilising our charitable funds to best affect. There were lots of questions after they spoke and during the reception and lunch afterwards.

During Common Hall we admitted a further Liveryman – the Recorder of the City of London at the end of our meeting as he had court duties during the morning. I hope we all learnt a little more about how the Livery works behind the scenes during the course of the morning, both during our meetings and also from viewing the display arranged by Pamela Goldberg. I am sure we all enjoyed talking with our guests and new Liverymen as well as listening to Dr James Munro our guest speaker during Lunch whose topic was the web–based site he manages called “Patient Opinion”.