What did Slate plaque № 11684 do at Cannon Street Station?

The Story

# The Plumbers' Hall at Cannon Street Standing at Cannon Street Station, you're positioned where one of London's oldest professional guilds maintained their headquarters for nearly four centuries, making this patch of ground sacred to the craft of plumbing itself. From the medieval period through to 1863, the Worshipful Company of Plumbers operated their hall in Chequer Yard—just beyond where the railway station now stands—guarding the mysteries and standards of their trade through ordinances dating back to 1365 and formal heraldic recognition granted by Elizabeth I in 1588. When the Great Fire of 1666 consumed their original hall, the plumbers rebuilt it with characteristic determination, and that reconstructed building became the beating heart of London's plumbing profession for nearly two centuries more, until the inexorable march of Victorian progress—in the form of the railway expansion of 1863—finally claimed the site. Though the physical hall vanished into history, the plaque's defiant inscription reminds us that the Company itself endured: the guild that once stood here continues to flourish "root and branch," making this anonymous stretch of pavement along the Thames a monument to professional legacy and the stubborn survival of London's ancient trades.