's Atlas, claimed to be as it was in 1667 Merchants from Cologne bought a building at the corner of Thames Street and Cousin Lane in the 1170s, though they seem to have used it as early as 1157, and it became known as the "Germans' Guildhall" (). Henry II of England granted very extensive privileges to traders from Cologne in 1175/76 in an attempt to limit the power of Flemish merchants who then controlled the English wool trade. This group from Cologne effectively controlled the trade of Rhine wine and acquired a building called the
gildhalla from then on too. They are alluded to in the
De itinere navali, an account of crusaders from Lübeck for whom the kontor arranged the purchase of a replacement cog in the summer of 1189. The privileges of the Guildhall existed alongside individual cities' privileges. By 1420 the Hanseatic League's trade in England had decreased in importance. The English Parliament in 1431 increased poundage by half for foreign merchants. In 1434 the
Tagfahrt (
de) (the Hanse representative body) finally began negotiations and started a blockade at the same time. The conflict was resolved in 1437 with the Second Treaty of London, when Hanseatic privileges were renewed and the new duties were removed. The Teutonic grandmaster did not ratify the treaty, pressed by
Danzig, but England still enforced it despite unfulfilled demands for equal privileges for English traders in 1442 and 1446.
After the Anglo-Hanseatic War In 1475 the Hanseatic League purchased the London site outright and it became universally known as the Steelyard. The kontor then required that Hansards lived on the Steelyard. In exchange for the privileges the German merchants had to maintain
Bishopsgate, one of the originally seven gates of the city, from where the roads led to their interests in
Boston and
Lynn. The Hanse Merchants Act 1503 (
19 Hen. 7. c. 23) confirmed in law the exemption of the Hanseatic League from all laws that ordinarily applied to foreign merchants. Danzig and Cologne were still the dominant players in the Hansa's trade on England in the 16th century, but Hamburg achieved an important role by shipping German fabrics and Icelandic cod to England and English ink to the Netherlands. Hamburg's merchants became over time less involved in active trade with England, and let other parties carry goods instead. portraits which were so successful that the Steelyard merchants commissioned from Holbein the allegorical paintings
The Triumph of Riches and
The Triumph of Poverty for their Hall. Both were destroyed by a fire, but there are copies in the
Ashmolean Museum in
Oxford. Later merchants of the Steelyard were portrayed by
Cornelis Ketel. There is a fine description of the Steelyard by
John Stow. especially in 1808, when the three cities considered their membership in the
Confederation of the Rhine. His son
James Colquhoun was his successor as Consul of the Hanseatic cities in London. Lübeck, Bremen and Hamburg only sold their common property, the London Steelyard, to the
South Eastern Railway in 1852. The buildings were demolished in 1863.
Cannon Street station was built on the site and opened in 1866. == Organisation and life ==