Plaque marking Haberdashers property in the City of London
The Worshipful Company of Haberdashers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The organisation, which developed from the Mercers' Company, another Livery Company connected with clothing and haberdashery, received a Royal Charter in 1448. The Company, which was originally responsible for the regulation of cloth merchants, began to lose control due to the increase in the population of London, its jurisdiction. Thus, the Company now exists as an educational and charitable institution only, instead of retaining links to its original trade.
As an educational institution, the Haberdashers' company has been active in founding eight schools. It created a boys' school at Hoxton, which then split into schools at Hatcham in south London and Hampstead in north London; the Hampstead school moved in 1961 to become the Haberdashers' Aske's School, Elstree. The Hatcham school now admits girls as well as boys; a separate girls' school was founded at Acton but has now moved to be close to the Elstree school. Other Haberdashers' schools are situated elsewhere in the UK, for example William Adams opened the Adams' Grammar School in 1656 in his home town of Newport, Shropshire.
Being a principally Christian organisation, the Haberdashers present copies of the King James Bible to leavers of their schools.
The Company ranks eighth in the order of precedence of Livery Companies; it is therefore considered one of the "Great Twelve City Livery Companies". The Company's motto is Serve and Obey. Its Hall was for many centuries in the Bassishaw ward of the City but since 2002 the Company has moved into a new Hall in Farringdon Without.
[edit] List of Haberdashers Schools
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