in 1899 by Mr. Leonard Bolingbroke, who rescued it from decay, and permits the public to inspect its beauties.  The crypt and cellars, and possibly the kitchen and buttery, were portions of the original house owned in 1358 by Robert Herdegrey, Burgess in Parliament and Bailiff of the City, and the present hall, with its groined porch and oriel window, was erected later over the original fourteenth-century cellars.  It was inhabited by a succession of merchants and chief men of Norwich, and at the beginning of the sixteenth century passed into the family of Sotherton.  The merchant’s mark of Nicholas Sotherton is painted on the roof of the hall.  You can see this fine hall with its screen and gallery and beautifully-carved woodwork.  The present Jacobean staircase and gallery, big oak window, and doorways leading into the garden are later additions made by Francis Cook, grocer of Norwich, who was mayor of the city in 1627.  The house probably took its name from the family of Le Strange, who settled in Norwich in the sixteenth century.  In 1610 the Sothertons conveyed the property to Sir le Strange Mordant, who sold it to the above-mentioned Francis Cook.  Sir Joseph Paine came into possession just before the Restoration, and we see his initials, with those of his wife Emma, and the date 1659, in the spandrels of the fire-places in some of the rooms.  This beautiful memorial of the merchant princes of Norwich, like many other old houses, fell into decay.  It is most pleasant to find that it has now fallen into such tender hands, that its old timbers have been saved and preserved by the generous care of its present owner, who has thus earned the gratitude of all who love antiquity.

Sometimes buildings erected for quite different purposes have been used as guild halls.  There was one at Reading, a guild hall near the holy brook in which the women washed their clothes, and made so much noise by “beating their battledores” (the usual style of washing in those days) that the mayor and his worthy brethren were often disturbed in their deliberations, so they petitioned the King to grant them the use of the deserted church of the Greyfriars’ Monastery lately dissolved in the town.  This request was granted, and in the place where the friars sang their services and preached, the mayor and burgesses “drank their guild” and held their banquets.  When they got tired of that building they filched part of the old grammar school from the boys, making an upper storey, wherein they held their council meetings.  The old church then was turned into a prison, but now happily it is a church again.  At last the corporation had a town hall of their own, which they decorated with the initials S.P.Q.R., Romanus and Readingensis conveniently beginning with the same letter.  Now they have a grand new town hall, which provides every accommodation for this growing town.

[Illustration:  The Greenland Fishery House, King’s Lynn.  An old Guild House of the time of James I]