The Steelyard, from the
Middle Low German
Middle Low German or Middle Saxon (autonym: ''Sassisch'', i.e. " Saxon", Standard High German: ', Modern Dutch: ') is a developmental stage of Low German. It developed from the Old Saxon language in the Middle Ages and has been documented i ...
(sample yard), was the main trading base () of the
Hanseatic League in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
during the 15th and 16th centuries.
Location
The Steelyard was located on the north bank of the
Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...
by the outflow of the
Walbrook
Walbrook is a City ward and a minor street in its vicinity. The ward is named after a river of the same name.
The ward of Walbrook contains two of the City's most notable landmarks: the Bank of England and the Mansion House. The street runs ...
, in the
Dowgate
Dowgate, also referred to as ''Downgate'' and ''Downegate'', is a small ward in the City of London, the historic and financial centre of London. The ward is bounded to the east by Swan Lane and Laurence Poutney Lane, to the south by the River Th ...
ward of the
City of London
The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...
. The site is bounded by Cousin Lane on the west, Upper Thames Street on the north, and Allhallows Lane on the east, an area of 5,250 m
2 or 1.3 acres. It is now covered by
Cannon Street station
Cannon Street station, also known as London Cannon Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Travelcard zone 1 located on Cannon Street in the City of London and managed by Network Rail. It is ...
and commemorated in the names of Steelyard Passage
[Panayi, P., ''Germans in Britain Since 1500,'' A&C Black, 1996, p. 19] and Hanseatic Walk. The Steelyard, like other Hansa stations, was a separate walled community with its own warehouses on the river, its own
weigh house
A weighhouse or weighing house is a public building at or within which goods are weighed. Most of these buildings were built before 1800, prior to the establishment of international standards for weights, and were often a large and representative ...
, chapel,
counting house
A counting house, or counting room, was traditionally an office in which the financial books of a business were kept. It was also the place that the business received appointments and correspondence relating to demands for payment.
As the use of ...
s, a
guildhall
A guildhall, also known as a "guild hall" or "guild house", is a historical building originally used for tax collecting by municipalities or merchants in Great Britain and the Low Countries. These buildings commonly become town halls and in som ...
, cloth halls, wine cellars, kitchens, and residential quarters.
As a church the Germans used former
All-Hallows-the-Great
All-Hallows-the-Great was a church in the City of London, located on what is now Upper Thames Street, first mentioned in 1235. Destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666, the church was rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. All-Ha ...
, since there was only a small chapel on their own premises. Merchants operating out of the Steelyard were granted certain privileges and were exempt from customs duties and some taxes. In effect, the Steelyard was a separate and independent community, governed by the codes of the Hanseatic League, and enforced by the merchants' native cities.
In 1988 remains of the former Hanseatic trading house, once the largest medieval trading complex in Britain, were uncovered by archaeologists during maintenance work on Cannon Street Station.
History
The first mention of a ''Hansa Almaniae'' (a "German Hansa") in English records is in 1282, concerning merely the community of the London trading post, only later to be made official as the Steelyard and confirmed in tax and customs concessions granted by
Edward I, in a ''
Carta Mercatoria'' ("merchant charter") of 1303. The true power of the Hanse in English trade came much later, in the 15th century, as the German merchants, led by those of
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
expanded their premises and extended their reach into the cloth-making industry of England.
This led to constant friction over the legal position of English merchants in the Hanseatic towns and Hanseatic privileges in England, which repeatedly ended in acts of violence. Not only English wool but finished cloth was exported through the Hansa, who controlled the trade in Colchester and other cloth-making centres.
When the Guildhall was destroyed in 1469, the merchants of Cologne were exempted by
Edward IV, which served to foment dissension among Hansards when the Hanse cities
went to war with England, and Cologne was temporarily expelled from the League. England, in the throes of the
Wars of the Roses
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, were a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These wars were fought bet ...
, was in a weak bargaining position, so despite several heavy defeats suffered by the Hanseatic fleet , the Hanseatic forces, consisting mainly of ships from only two cities (Lubeck and Gdansk), with the help of formidable ships like the
Peter von Danzig
''Peter von Danzig'' was a 15th-century ship of the Hanseatic League. The three-masted ship was the first large vessel in the Baltic Sea with carvel planking.
Career
''Peter von Danzig'' was built at the French west coast and originally name ...
won the
Anglo-Hanseatic War
The Anglo-Hanseatic War was a conflict fought between England and the Hanseatic League, led by the cities of Gdańsk and Lübeck, that lasted from 1469 to 1474. Causes of the war include increasing English pressure against the trade of the Hans ...
and achieved a very favourable peace from the English commissioners in
Utrecht in 1474.
In 1475 the Hanseatic League purchased the London site outright and it became universally known as the Steelyard, but this was the last outstanding success of the Hansa. In exchange for the privileges the German merchants had to maintain
Bishopsgate, one of the originally seven gates of the city, from where the roads led to their interests in
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
and
Lynn.
![Hanseatic Warehouse King's Lynn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Hanseatic_Warehouse_King%27s_Lynn.JPG)
Members of the Steelyard, normally stationed in London for only a few years, sat for a famous series of portraits by
Hans Holbein the Younger in the 1530s, portraits which were so successful that the Steelyard Merchants commissioned from Holbein the allegorical paintings ''The Triumph of Riches'' and ''The Triumph of Poverty'' for their Hall. Both were destroyed by a fire, but there are copies in the
Ashmolean Museum in
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
. Later merchants of the Steelyard were portrayed by
Cornelis Ketel
Cornelis is a Dutch form of the male given name Cornelius. Some common shortened versions of Cornelis in Dutch are Cees, Cor, Corné, Corneel, Crelis, Kees, Neel and Nelis.
Cornelis (Kees) and Johannes (Jan) used to be the most common given ...
. There is a fine description of the Steelyard by
John Stow.
Later history
The prosperity of the Hanse merchants, who were in direct competition with those of the
City of London
The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...
, induced
Queen Elizabeth to suppress the Steelyard and rescind its privileges in 1598.
James I James I may refer to:
People
*James I of Aragon (1208–1276)
*James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327)
*James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu
*James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347)
*James I of Cyprus (1334–13 ...
reopened the Steelyard, but it never again carried the weight it formerly had in London. Most of the buildings were destroyed during the
Great Fire of London in 1666. The land and buildings remained the property of the Hanseatic League, and were subsequently let as warehouses to merchants.
The Hanseatic League was never officially dissolved. Consulates of the Hanseatic League cities provided indirect communication between
Northern Germany and
Whitehall
Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea. It is the main thoroughfare running south from Trafalgar Square towards Parliament Sq ...
during the European blockade of the
Napoleonic wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
.
Patrick Colquhoun
Patrick Colquhoun ( ; 14 March 1745 – 25 April 1820) was a Scottish merchant, statistician, magistrate, and founder of the first regular preventive police force in England, the Thames River Police. He also served as Lord Provost of Glasgow ...
was appointed as
Resident Minister
A resident minister, or resident for short, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indir ...
and
Consul general
A consul is an official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, as well as to facilitate trade and friendship between the people ...
by the Hanseatic cities of
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
in 1804 and by
Bremen and
Lübeck
Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the state ...
shortly after as the successor of Henry Heymann, who was also ''Stalhofmeister'', "master of the Steelyard". Colquhoun was valuable to those cities through their occupation by the French since he provided indirect communication between
Northern Germany and
Whitehall
Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea. It is the main thoroughfare running south from Trafalgar Square towards Parliament Sq ...
,
[G. D. Yeats, ''Biographical Sketch...'', 44–45.] especially in 1808, when the three cities considered their membership in the
Confederation of the Rhine
The Confederated States of the Rhine, simply known as the Confederation of the Rhine, also known as Napoleonic Germany, was a confederation of German client states established at the behest of Napoleon some months after he defeated Austria an ...
. His son
James Colquhoun was his successor as Consul of the Hanseatic cities in London.
![Stahlhof-Duesseldorf](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Stahlhof-Duesseldorf.jpg)
Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg only sold their common property, the London Steelyard, to the
South Eastern Railway in 1852.
Cannon Street station
Cannon Street station, also known as London Cannon Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Travelcard zone 1 located on Cannon Street in the City of London and managed by Network Rail. It is ...
was built on the site and opened in 1866.
From 1906 to 1908, another "
Stahlhof" was built in
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian language, Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second- ...
, Germany, as the headquarters of the newly established German steel
cartel
A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collude with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. Cartels are usually associations in the same sphere of business, and thus an alliance of rivals. Mos ...
. Since 1945, this building was used first by the British Military Government, then as seat of a legal court.
Steelyard balance
The Steelyard possibly gave its name to the
steelyard balance
A steelyard balance, steelyard, or stilyard is a straight-beam balance with arms of unequal length. It incorporates a counterweight which slides along the longer arm to counterbalance the load and indicate its weight. A steelyard is also known as ...
, a type of portable
balance
Balance or balancing may refer to:
Common meanings
* Balance (ability) in biomechanics
* Balance (accounting)
* Balance or weighing scale
* Balance as in equality or equilibrium
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Balance'' (1983 film), a Bulgaria ...
, consisting of a suspended horizontal beam. An object to be weighed would be hung on the shorter end of the beam, while weights would be slid along the longer end, till the beam balanced. The weight could then be calculated by multiplying the sum of the known weights by the ratio of the distances from the beam's
fulcrum
A fulcrum is the support about which a lever pivots.
Fulcrum may also refer to:
Companies and organizations
* Fulcrum (Anglican think tank), a Church of England think tank
* Fulcrum Press, a British publisher of poetry
* Fulcrum Wheels, a bicy ...
.
Gallery
File:Hans Holbein der Jüngere - Der Kaufmann Georg Gisze - Google Art Project.jpg, Georg Giese from Danzig, 34-year-old German merchant at the Steelyard, painted in London by Hans Holbein in 1532
File:Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-8-1543) - A Merchant of the German Steelyard, 'Hans of Antwerp' - RCIN 404443 - Royal Collection.jpg, Hans of Antwerp 1532
File:Hans Holbein d.J. - Porträt eines Mitgliedes der Familie Wedigh.jpg, Hermann Wedigh 1532
File:Member of the von Wedigh Family, (called Hermann Hillebrandt von Wedigh), by Hans Holbein the Younger.jpg, Hillebrant Wedigh of Cologne; 1533
File:Hans Holbein d.J. - Der Duisburger Kaufmann Dirck Tybis (1533).jpg, Dirk Tybis of Duisburg; 1533
File:Portrait of Cyriacus Kale, by Hans Holbein the Younger.jpg, Cyriacus Kale 1533
File:Hans Holbein the Younger - Derich Born (1510?-49) - Google Art Project.jpg, Derick Born (1533);
File:Derich Berck, by Hans Holbein.jpg, Derick Berck (painted in 1536)
File:London Steelyard 412.jpg, A commemorative plaque placed in 2005 at Cannon Street station
Cannon Street station, also known as London Cannon Street, is a central London railway terminus and connected London Underground station in Travelcard zone 1 located on Cannon Street in the City of London and managed by Network Rail. It is ...
, near the location of the Steelyard
References
External links
Prof. Rainer Postel, "The Hanseatic League and its decline" 1996 one of the Steelyard portraits
*Grant David Yeats
''A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Writings of Patrick Colqhoun'' London: G. Smeeton, 1818.
{{Authority control
Trading posts of the Hanseatic League
Economic history of England
Economic history of London
History of the City of London