Records of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, 1300? - 2002. IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING ACCESS: These records are stored at the Guildhall Library site rather than the LMA Clerkenwell site. Researchers wishing to access these records should do so at the Guildhall Library Rare Books table. The Library is open Monday to Saturday, 9:30 to 16:45. Researchers will need to have an Archives History Card or a Library Readers Card. An archivist will be available at Guildhall Library on Thursday mornings to answer any queries.
Note that many loose papers, relating to every aspect of the Company's business, and dating from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, were gathered together, sorted and placed in 277 boxes and a further ca.430 bundles by the Company in ca.1925-30. Most of these boxes, and all surviving bundles, were deposited in the Manuscripts Section in 1996, and their arrangement has been retained with minimal alteration as Mss 34100-1. For schedules of these papers see Ms 34102. Readers should therefore be alert to the possibility that papers on any particular subject of interest to them may be contained within these two series, but obscured because the online catalogue does not include the detailed list contained in Ms 34102, though cross-references from the rest of the catalogue have been provided where possible.
Written permission from the Clerk of the Company is required for access to post-1965 material deposited in the Manuscripts Section, and for a few items of an earlier date which remain confidential.
Records of the Merchant Taylors' School include constitutional documents, minutes, prospectuses, register sof pupils and staff, reports to the Company, accounts, correspondence, legal papers, photos and plans, catalogues of the library and other miscellaneous administrative papers. Note that Ms 34100, the series of miscellaneous documents in numbered boxes, contains various documents about Merchant Taylors' School and/or St John's College, Oxford: see Ms 34100/70, 111-4, 121, 139, 147, 156, 158, 160-1, 163, 165-70, 181, 191 and 193. So also does Ms 34101, the series of miscellaneous legal papers in numbered bundles: see Ms 34101/20 (bundles 181, 185, 187-8), 21 (bundle 190), 24 (bundle 251), 33 (bundle 381), 34 (bundle 393) and 36 (bundle 409). For plans see as follows: Suffolk Lane: Ms 34214/2, 8; Charterhouse Square: Ms 34214/9-12, 14; Sandy Lodge: Ms 34214/13, 15. Further plans may be in the plan books (Mss 34216-23). The records were deposited with the records for the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1996. They were catalogued by members of the Manuscripts Section of Guildhall Library.
