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The Erber: tracing global trade through a London building

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2020

Sarah A. Milne
Sarah A. Milne*
Affiliation:
Survey of London, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, 22 Gordon Street, WC1H 0QB, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Through a case-study of one significant courtyard house owned by the Drapers’ Company and known as ‘The Erber’, this article argues that mercantile livery companies supported London's growing centrality within an expanding network of trade through the use and development of corporate properties. The micro-history at the heart of this article reveals that the ‘everyday’ built environment of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London was shaped not just by the city elite. Also relevant to that process were the different sorts of tenants of the Drapers’ Company, who benefited from the expansion at all levels of London's mercantile activity. The trickle-down effects of global mercantilism affected spaces small and large. The investigation of the Erber highlights the domestic implications of global commercial expansion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 435 - 460
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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84 DCA, RA 1589–90, fol. 14v.

85 DCA, RA 1575–76, fols. 9r, 18v; DCA, RA 1576–77, fol. 10r; DCA, RA 1580–81, fol. 9v. In 1615–16, the Renter Accounts still referred to a working saw pit in the yard at Dowgate: DCA, RA 1615–16, fol. 34r.

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96 DCA, RA 1563–64, fol. 20v. For confirmation of Clothworker status, see also D.J. Hickman, ‘The religious allegiance of London's ruling elite, 1520–1603’, UCL, Ph.D. thesis, 1995, Appendix 2.

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98 DCA, RA 1607–08, fol. 21r.

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100 DCA, RA 1564–65, fol. 20v.

101 DCA, RA 1581–82, fols. 15v–16r. See R.G. Lang (ed.), Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls for the City of London 1541 and 1582 (London, 1993), 293; TNA, E 40/12811, 3 Feb. 1568; TNA, E 40/12204, 20 Oct. 1570.

102 DCA, MB9, fols. 128r, 152r–153r; DCA, RA 1579–80, fols. 16v–17r.

103 DCA, RA 1594–95, fol. 9v

104 DCA, RA 1595–96, fol. 11r.

105 DCA, RA 1597–98, fol. 10v.

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107 DCA, RA 1618–19, fol. 18r; DCA, RA 1619–20, fol. 21r.

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