A Short History of the Worshipful Company of Horners

Before glass bottles, before plastic, before stainless steel, there was horn. This forgotten history resurrects the Worshipful Company of Horners, a guild so ancient its roots reach into Saxon England, officially chartered in 1284 but practiced centuries before that. H.G. Rosedale pieced together this account after the miraculous rediscovery of the guild's 'Old Book,' missing for 250 years. The result is a window into medieval London's economic soul: ordinary men shaping cattle and sheep horns into the drinking vessels, combs, buttons, powder flasks, and shoehorns that sustained daily life. Rosedale documents the guild's struggles against rivals, its absorption of the Bottlemakers in 1476 when glass usurped leather, and the strange spectacle of the Horn Fair, once a day of chaos and revelry on the South Bank. This is not a grand narrative of kings and battles, but something rarer: the humbler story of how ordinary craftsmen built a city, one carved horn at a time. For anyone curious about the invisible hands that shaped medieval life, this slim volume holds quiet treasures.