History of York

The Merchant Adventurers' Hall on Fossgate was built between 1357 and 1368 on the site of a Norman mansion as the communal meeting hall, chapel and undercroft hospital of the Fraternity of the Holy Trinity.  This was a religious and charitably mutual association.

The three anterooms and the Governor’s Parlour were all added after the main hall was built.  The chapel dates from 1411.

By 1430 the Fellowship of Mercers – dealers in textiles – and their trading association, the Guild of Merchant Adventurers, used the hall to transact their business affairs, to meet together socially, to look after the poor and to pray to God.

One of the finest buildings of its type in the world, the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall is framed in oak from the Forest of Galtres.

It has been altered over the centuries. A two-storey annexe on the Fossgate side was added in Elizabethan times.  The floor of the undercroft was raised because of flooding.  The windows in the building were added in the Georgian era.  Before that the hall would have had much smaller windows, high up the walls.