The Moot Hall

Not the Moot Hall!

Photo Gerard McSweeney

Mistaken identity

By Gerard Mcsweeney

A plaque on the wall of W. H. Smith’s, at the corner of Market Place and Upper Dagnall Street, records that it was the Moot Hall (town meeting-place), the building in which the leaders of the Peasants’ Revolt (1381) were tried.  

However, J.T.Smith dated the present building to the third quarter of the sixteenth century.  The Borough Charter of Edward VI (1553) granted a house on the site, previously belonging to the Guild of All Saints and then the Crown, to the Mayor and Burgesses to use as a Common Hall for meetings. This date is therefore consistent with a replacement being built soon afterwards, namely, the present building, which therefore cannot be the Moot Hall.       

A series of deeds has now established that the medieval Moot Hall was on the site of the Court House chamber, which survives in the 1832 Town Hall (q.v.), although no longer used for trials. 

A full account of the research involved, together with a short description of the immediate area in the Middle Ages, can be found in Hertfordshire Archaeology, Vol. 13, p.89 (1997-2003), published by the St. Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural & Archaeological Society.