Guildhall
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Guildhall. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the council hall of London. It is situated near the very heart of historic London at the end of King Street, leading a block aside from the rattle and clatter of Cheapside. It is an irregular building, or rather a group of connected buildings. If fires and enlargements be taken into consideration, we may say the first foundation was laid in 1411 and the last roof put on in 1885. The great hall is a central audience room, where citizens transact such public business as the election of a lord mayor and city members of Parliament. It was put in repair in 1865 at an expense of $150,000. It is a large handsome hall 153 feet long and 48 feet wide. A remarkable open timber ceiling is 55 feet above the floor. There are stained glass windows representing the armorial bearings of Queen Victoria and of the city. The walls are adorned with statues and busts of Lord Chatham, Wellington, Nelson, William Pitt, Mayor Beckford, Beaconsfield, and Gladstone. Every ninth of November the Lord Mayor on his induction to office gives a dinner here to a thousand invited guests. It is not beneath the dignity of the prime minister to be present and to make an afterdinner speech in which the policy of the government is defined. The new common council chamber and the alderman's room are other parts of the building reached by passages. They are adorned by busts and historic paintings. Among the latter are the Siege of Gibraltar by Copley and the Death of Wat Tyler by Northcote. The Guildhall library, built in Tudor style, contains 40,000 volumes, including rare specimens of early printing. It is the aim of the custodians to center here a complete collection of all books, manuscripts, descriptions, prints, plans, or pictures that in any way throw light on the history of London. A department, known as the museum, contains a wonderfully interesting collection of Roman antiquities found in London. There are groups of sculpture, six-sided marble columns, Roman pavements, stone coffins, statues, and thousands of lamps, vases, dishes, goblets, spoons, trinkets, pins, needles, and the like found in excavating old Roman walls at Bishopsgate, in cutting down Ludgate Hall, and elsewhere.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a building in London, the place of assembly of several courts, and the scene of the civic banquets of the city corporation; originally built in 1411, but almost wholly destroyed by the gr great fire of 1666. It was rebuilt in 1789 in its modern form.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 boast that "the last roof [was] put on in 1885" was undone on the night of 29 December 1940, when German incendiaries burned out the great hall's open timber ceiling in the Blitz; the roof standing today is a stone-arched replacement by Giles Gilbert Scott, finished in 1954. The Guildhall Library survived but lost tens of thousands of volumes to the same raids, and the Roman antiquities Aiton describes are no longer shown on site — the Guildhall Museum was merged into the new Museum of London in the 1970s. The biggest find came later still: excavation for a new art gallery in 1988 uncovered London's Roman amphitheatre directly beneath the Guildhall yard, now displayed in the gallery's basement. The ceremonial life the accounts describe continues, with the Lord Mayor elected in Common Hall and the Prime Minister still speaking at the November banquet.
Written for this edition, 2026.