Place Name
After the adjacent Guildhall. A Guildhall was first mentioned in a survey of buildings owned by St Paul’s Cathedral in 1128. The word guild comes from geld meaning a money-payment. It was collected by the men of the same guild – there were 84 trade and craft guilds in the City – for their mutual aid. It has the distinction of being the only secular stone building still standing in London from before the Great Fire of 1666.
