Halls of Sarrum

The eleven trade guilds of Sarrum, bound to one another since 4494 by the Articles of the Halls, a thirty-nine-clause treaty covering demarcation, arbitration, the limits of hall bands, common charges and fourteen days' notice before a stoppage. They regulate trades and admitted members, run guild courts, keep armed hall bands, and prosecute interference with the Rows, conduits, railhead and wharf gear as capital offences.

The eleven trade halls of Sarrum, which together with the council administer the city, set wool grades and keep guild courts over their members. They settle quarrels among themselves under the thirty-nine Articles of 4494 and maintain hall bands to guard property, escort valuables and enforce hall decisions. The guild halls of Sarrum City, among the bodies that keep the city's production moving and in practice govern it more than the appointed civic machinery under Mayor Robert Kelham.

Named with it

• Guildmaster Prudence Kerrow · most formidable voice
• Wool-Stapler Josiah Thane of Wetherslade · letters to the Hall
• Symon Gant · Clerk of the Halls, 4498
• Aldous Prole · ledger clerk of the Halls counting house
• Clerk of the Halls Symon Gant · the Articles, 4498

Ties

• beside the Sarrum city council and the Bank Council
• keep the Sarrum hall bands
• opposed in memory by the neighbourhood associations
• guild jurisdiction witnessed yearly by House Hartfell and House Ashdown
• fund the four public surgical houses with the banks
• signatories of the Bill of 4551
• pay the Rows watch
• pay retainers to the four fraternities

In the chronicle

• 4402 · The Weavers’ Wall Proposal
• 4489 · The Cinder Rising
• c. 4489 · The walled Rows proposal
• 4494 · The Articles of the Halls
• 4522 · The truck prohibition of 4522
• 4543 · The Fleecegate Sickness
• 4551 · The Sarrum Bill of Rights
• 4574 · The Warehouse Prosecution
• 4576 · The Admission of the Enginewrights
• 4591 · The second Rows hanging
• 4596 · The Lodging House Proposal
• 4608 · The third Rows hanging
• 4611 · The Hiring Names Proposal

At the table

Measured against the whole city, the associations of the underworld are weaker yet than the halls, the banks or the charter companies. The halls are kept in order by one thing, the Crown's unused power to withdraw their guild recognition. In their reading of the Cinder Rising, given aloud, the lesson is that disorder finishes in the yard. The trade may be denied to a man by a hall. That the Bank Council stands outside the Articles is the chief structural trouble in the government of Sarrum. Four retainers a quarter, unexplained, have gone from the Halls' counting house to the four fraternities for eighty years, and in the ledgers of the 4470s and 4480s stand 'ground charges' nobody accounts for. The Rows watch is paid for by the halls; leave to open up a floor they denied Serjeant Fenn. What they decline to do, it is said, buys them the labour market they want. Around eleven clerks of long service sit in every hall, and through them a company best finds its way in.