The title, 'At Sixes and Sevens' refers a dispute in 1483 and 1484 regarding the order of precedence in the Lord Mayor's Procession on the Thames of both the Skinners' Company and the Merchant Taylors' Company. Adjudication of the tensions resulted in the two companies alternating their standing in the pecking order (p.40). The two livery companies now enjoy mutual respect and annual dinners in each other's halls. The London Livery Companies began as trade guilds in medieval London: the Skinners trading in Baltic furs and concerned with their skinning and sale. On Dowgate Hill, opposite the great bulk of the walls of Cannon Street Station, the courtyard with the hall on the west side is entered though an alley at the outer left-hand bay of a stone-fronted, five-bay range with a facade of 1778-79 by William Jupp (1734-1788) with the passageway matched by a door at the outer right-hand bay. The rear walls of this range and an adjacent house are red brick. The courtyard has a cloister (1902-16: W. Campbell-Jones) leading to the brick front of the hall. This is red brick in Flemish Bond, originally completely with blue brick headers: the illustration on pages 38-39 bring out the contrast, and also demonstrates the infilling of the windows to the hall in 1847-50 by George Moore (c. 1777-1859). As the photograph shows, war damage in 1940 was repaired but rather hurriedly and not to the same standard as the rebuilding of the hall following the Great Fire in 1666. John Oliver was the surveyor responsible, beginning in 1668 and completing the work within about two years.
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