Fishmongers' Hall (sometimes shortened to 'Fish Hall'), is in London, and home to a guild of fisheries. The earliest recorded Hall was built in 1310. A new Hall, on the present site, was bequeathed to the Company in 1434. Together with forty-three other Company Halls, this one was burnt down in the Great Fire of London (1666), and a replacement Hall designed by the architect Edward Jerman opened in 1671. This Hall was taken down when the new London Bridge was constructed in 1827. The next Hall opened in 1834, was designed by Henry Roberts although his assistant Gilbert Scott made the drawings for the new building, and built by Cubitts, the firm founded by Thomas Cubitt. Architecturally, this building is interesting in three ways: as sole survivor of quality from an important programme of town planning for the approaches to London Bridge; as one of the rare examples of an English Greek Revival town building, free-standing and largely unaltered; and for its early structural use of iron and hollow bricks, influenced by the mills of the Industrial Revolution. In 1831 the Fishmongers' Company announced a competition for the design of a new Hall. This was the most notable architectural competition in England between 1822 (for London Bridge) and 1835 (for the Houses of Parliament) and attracted 87 entrants. The design of the new bridge approaches was under the supervision of Sir Robert Smirke (the architect of the British Museum). The winner of the Fishmongers' competition was Henry Roberts (1803-76), who had worked for Smirke and was influenced by his master though no evidence exists that Smirke swayed the Wardens' choice. Roberts' design was for an arcaded base in the Roman-aqueduct style of the bridge and, above this level, a building in the Greek style. The riverside terrace related to the design of Somerset House further up river. The base was to be faced with the same Devon granite as the bridge, and the Hall above with Portland stone. The inevitable tenants (yielding revenue and sometimes nuisance on each Hall site) were now to be concentrated in a pedestal for the Hall, from which they could use the commercially essential wharf while the Hall itself stood at the new upper level of the bridge. Other thoughtful features were Roberts' off-centred entrance from the bridge approach, avoiding the public bridge stairs (now gone), and the curve of the banquet-hall ceiling, echoing the curve of the bridge arches (also now gone). The winning design was selected in February 1832. From about June 1832, the very youthful George Gilbert Scott, the future Victorian architect, spent two years in Roberts' office preparing working drawings for the Hall under Roberts' eye and to Roberts' designs. In the early summer of 1832 a concrete raft was laid over the entire ground, to stabilize the riverbank, and fourteen of the most reputable building contractors in London were invited to tender for the structural shell or carcass. A tender from the firm of William and Lewis Cubitt was accepted and the shell was completed in 1833, the date being carved in Roman numerals, with the Company's arms, on the east front.A contract to finish the interior of the Hall was agreed with Cubitts in 1834 and completed in the spring of 1835, with the architect supervising the ordering of fixtures and furnishings. The Hall was in use from June 1835, and interior decoration was added in 1840. The many changes in interior decoration have, over the years, reflected changes in English taste. In 1840 Roberts aimed for the restrained warmth of tawny and ivory tones, with delicate gilding, which characterized the King's Library at the British Museum and was suited to the lighting of early Victorian oil lamps and gas chandeliers. In 1865 the architect Owen Jones demonstrated at the Hall his theory that the ancient Greeks had used intense blues, reds and golds appropriate to the powerful light of Victorian gas sunburners. In 1898, when electric lighting was installed, redecoration was supervised by George Bodley, the eminent church architect and member of the Court of the Fishmongers' Company, and it was he who introduced much darker late Victorian colouring. After severe bomb damage during the London Blitz in December 1940, Fishmongers' Hall was restored by Austen Hall and reopened in 1951. The Hall contains many treasures, including the dagger with which Lord Mayor Walworth killed Wat Tyler in 1381, Annigoni's first portrait of H.M. the Queen, a fine collection of seventeenth and eighteenth-century silver, an embroidered fifteenth-century funeral pall, two portraits by Romney, and river scenes by Samuel Scott. The hall is located in Bridge ward, next to London Bridge.