Weavers' Hall

The oldest and largest of Sarrum's halls, some four thousand members across the seven wool trades. It grades the clip, sets standards, licenses fulling and dyeing, and controls the lead seal without which Sarrum cloth cannot be sold as such; it keeps a court of wardens, a treasury, a school, an almshouse, a chapel and a band.

The wool guild whose officers grade the county's clip, which fixes its price. Its hall holds the Sarrum copy of Wynstan's Boke of Boundes (4231), the county's oldest muniment, because by 4231 it was the only body with a strong-room and a clerk.

Named with it

• Guildmaster Prudence Kerrow · head, elected 4613

Ties

• permanent quarrel with the Staplers since 4488
• owns the Fleece Bank
• its band is the Blue Sleeves
• quarrel with the Carriers produced the Articles of 4494
• one of the Halls
• one of the eleven halls
• quarrel with the Staplers
• opposes the line company's rates

In the chronicle

• 4402 · The Weavers’ Wall Proposal
• 4488 · The Weavers–Staplers dispute
• 4494 · The Articles of the Halls
• c. 4494 · The Weavers–Carriers wharf stoppage
• 4602 · The Council’s Refusal
• 4610 · The shed rate cut of 4610
• 4613 · The Kerrow Election

At the table

Its fulling hands and spinners have votes, and so the court may be pushed from below: Kerrow was elected by their votes against the wardens' own candidate, and has twice raised the matter of displaced farm labour at the Halls. Of all offences the hall pursues seal forgery the hardest. For sickness it pays three shillings a week, for as long as eleven weeks. Twice it has received the shedwoman Alice Pym, and neither time has it taken up the half-wage question. In 4402 it proposed a walled enclosure; in 4602, that the Bank Council should join the Articles. Since 4590 it has maintained that the line's rates and hidden rebates swallow the whole of the benefit. Seen from the Downs, its permanent quarrel with the Staplers is the county's quarrel with the city. It keeps everything, and yet holds nothing from the winter of 4457. To the Wetherslade fleece fair it sends officers and a warden.