The Grocers' Company- A Short Introduction

The Worshipful Company of Grocers today ranks second in the Livery Companies of the City of London. Originally known as the Guild of Pepperers, whose earliest records date from 1180, it was formed as a religious and social fraternity of merchants and moneyers who traded in spices, gold, and other luxury goods from Byzantium and the Mediterranean. Their use on occasion of pepper as a currency gave rise to the expression "peppercorn rent".

The merchants formed a community centred on a church which they built in Soper Lane - now Queen Street - and dedicated to St. Antonin. They became increasingly involved in the import and export of a variety of goods which they bought and sold 'in gross’, changing the name of the guild in 1376 to 'The Company of Grossers of London'. The small shopkeepers who retailed the goods bought from the wholesale 'grossers', adopted the name of grocers and the meaning with which we associate it today. Over the centuries, the Grocers' Company lost its close connections with the trade of goods, wholesale and retail, as well as its former function of controlling weights and measures at the Port of London which, since the Great Fire of 1666, has been in the hands of HM Customs and Excise.

Today, the Company, along with the other Livery Companies, continues to play its role in the daily life of the City, in the election of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and carries on the traditions of one of the ancient fraternities, which, since the middle ages, have formed sounding boards of informed responsible opinion.

The Grocers' Company has always given generously to charity, when its means allow. During the past three hundred years, its charitable endeavours, including those related to education and the church, have been a principal aspect of the Company's activities. While the Company's donations to charity are mainly funded by assigned investments and annual grants from the Company's corporate income, a significant portion relies on regular support from the membership in the form of donations and Gift Aid.

The Education and Charities Committee is the policy-making body for the Grocers' Charity, the grant-making arm of the Grocers' Company. The Committee establishes broad targets, reviews all the charitable applications, and recommends to the Court of Assistants, who are also the Trustees of the Charity, what the response should be. It is responsible for the provision of grants, scholarships and bursaries to Oundle, and seven other schools with which it has historical connections, and for relations with the churches of which the Company is patron. With the recent increase in funds available to the Charity, the emphasis of giving has shifted with approximately one-third of charitable donations going to education and one-third to social welfare, and the balance being split between medicine, disability, the arts, heritage and the church.

The Company strives to live up to the ideals expressed in its early Ordinances, that it should be ‘a nursery of charities and a seminary of good citizens’.