York's secret history: story of Merchant Adventurers' Hall

From religious fraternity to a powerful trading body with links to trade in the far east and the fabled silk route, the organisation nevertheless came close to oblivion during the industrial revolution.

But it survived thanks to York’s great chocolate-making families, and although it is no longer a trading organisation, the company plays an important role in the life of the city today.

Its medieval hall on Fossgate is still used for business events and to help children learn about entrepreneurship.

The company’s clerk, Jim Richardson, delved into its long and fascinating history.

“The Merchant Adventurers started as a guild by royal licence in 1357,” he said. “Ostensibly, it started as a religious fraternity, in line with all guilds, with a very pious England at that time.”

Inside the historic Merchant Adventurers' Hall in York

Set up just ten years after the Black Death, the fraternity began by giving support to the impoverished traders of York who had fallen on hard times. “The company developed over the next 300 to 400 years receiving two royal charters – from King Edward III and then from Queen Elizabeth I. And then it really grew to be a very powerful and influential trading body in York. It controlled the import and export of all goods through the port of York as it was then, with the exception of fish and salt,” Jim said.

The company traded in Europe, meeting markets which had links to the silk route and the far east, enabling it to import spices and exotic food into England in the 1400s and even earlier.

Jim explained that the Merchant Adventurers were venture capitalists, financing trade expeditions into Europe.

But the position of the guilds was weakened over time as formal education took over the certification of apprenticeships, and trading standards took over the certification of weights and measure and the purity of gold.

“The relevance of the guilds started to wane and the death knell to it – or what could have been the death knell to it – was the industrial revolution, whereby ships got bigger and were made out of metal.

“They were no longer able to come up the Ouse, from the Humber and across the North Sea. The railway started to move goods around the UK and because ships were bigger the ports became places like Hull and Harwich and Ipswich, Newcastle, Teesport etc. The importance of the Merchant Adventurers declined and the guild nearly died.”

It was the great chocolate making families such as Terry and Rowntree who came to the aid of the company in the early 1900s.They became Merchant Adventurers themselves, which in turn attracted other influential business leaders. This also led to the magnificent guild hall being refurbished and preserved for the nation.

Members of the Leeds Rifles, the 1/7th West Yorkshire Regiment celebrating Christmas 1914 at the Merchant Adventurers Hall in York

Jim said: “The hall is one of the finest medieval guild halls in the United Kingdom. It is still owned by the company that built it over 660 years ago. It is a grade I national listed monument.”

The hall is now a living museum. It has a thriving café and is hired out for dining and weddings to bring in revenue to help with its upkeep.

“There’s no trading that happens here any more, there’s no financing of things, but still about 50 per cent of our members are people who are business owners who run their own businesses, and the other half of members are people who have succeeded in their profession be that in accountancy or law or education, real estate, those sorts of things,” Jim said.

The Merchant Adventurers has 170 members and two charitable trusts.

The first trust is concerned with preserving the grade I-listed hall and making sure it is maintained for the nation. It is also tasked with looking after the impoverished. Right from its earliest days the company had in its charter the ability to look after 13 pensioners.

Currently it helps nine pensioners, paying them a small pension, visiting them and offering events to enable them to meet other people.

The second charitable trust aims to promote the knowledge and education of business and enterprise.

“We have a primary school coming to the hall every week to see living history and to see how trade was done. They play trading games, they learn about the importance of trade, how it was organised and how geographically York was important in that way,” Jim said.

“We work with an organisation called the Independent State School Partnership, which is a collaboration of the private schools and the state schools in York, to bring extra curricular teaching to 15 and 16 year olds in business.

“They have a masterclass in how to start a business, how to run a company, how to design and market a product etc. It runs over a school term in the summer term. We fund and finance that for up to 30 youngsters, boys and girls, typically from state schools where business education is not on the curriculum and offered.”

The company also holds free lectures for the public three times a year, one on an arts subject, one on science, and one on business.

In addition it sponsors six free business breakfasts every year, targeting young start-up businesses in and around York and giving them access to free mentoring and advice.

“So right across the full panoply of really young children, through to senior schoolchildren, through to the public and then to the business community, we’re trying to promote and stimulate business, entrepreneurship and trade,” Jim said.

As part of their work with children, staff at the hall have developed a trading game, based on the reality of how trade was. Children are given an imaginary sum of money and a shopping list of goods they can buy in York, which they then take to a foreign port to sell. They could find themselves taking wool to Gdansk, salt to Bordeaux and wine to England, making a healthy profit with each transaction.

“Over the trading game starting with £100 the best traders have ended up with nearly £5,000 after their trade,” Jim said.

“Now it’s a game and there are no mishaps in it, there are no storms or pirates, but the children very quickly learn how trade and commerce is done. If you have a commodity that is scarce you can demand a higher price for it.

If you’re prepared to move goods from one place to another, where they are in abundance in one place and move them to where there is scarcity, you can create wealth out of it. And of course that’s the building block for how the British Empire developed.

“The children love it and we love enthusing them. There is nothing better than seeing 30 very noisy, interested, energetic schoolchildren trading in our hall.”

The Merchant Adventurers gives free use of the hall to York Business Week, as well as hosting the city council’s climate change carbon conference free of charge. It sponsors prizes for students who excel on business and enterprise courses at both the city’s universities, and it also sponsors Apprentice of the Year in the York Press Business Awards.

Jim began working as clerk, effectively chief executive, three years ago, with a brief to develop a new strategy for the company for the next five to seven years.

“There are three themes within that strategy and they’re very important.

“The first theme is relevance. Although we’re a historic organisation we need to be relevant to the city of York in a modern way, not just in a historical way. We want to stimulate business now in 2023,” he said. The second theme is to be prominent both physically and figuratively.

“We want people to know who we are and to recognise us, and to know that they can visit us.”

He added: “And then the last thread is about heritage and protecting our heritage.

“We must make sure that we recognise the heritage that we’ve got but we present it in a way that is modern.”

Plans for the future include developing the hall’s outdoor space to attract visitors. They are also looking at how they can decarbonise the building.