The stone chimneypiece in the library of the Charles S. Pillsbury Mansion has always come with a good story: it is said to have survived the Great Fire of London and to have been carved for a London guild. But a story is not the same as a record. In August 2025 a herald at the College of Arms in London, James Peill, Bluemantle Pursuivant, put the fireplace’s carved arms through the official records. His report is short, precise and full of surprises.

Whose coat of arms is carved on the fireplace?

The report begins with a plain statement of the task: to identify the arms carved on top of the stone chimneypiece in the records of the College of Arms, whose records date back to its foundation in 1484. There are also four smaller shields on the frieze, but they are so worn that identifying them is almost impossible. The report describes the piece as said to have survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 and to have been in Chester before it was installed, in the early twentieth century, in a Minneapolis house.

The search worked. The arms are those of the Tallow Chandlers’ Livery Company, one of the ancient livery companies of the City of London. If you want the story of the guild itself, we told it in Who Were the Tallow Chandlers? This post is about what the heralds could add.

What did the 1456 grant say?

According to the report, the guild was first granted arms by John Smert, Garter King of Arms, on 24 September 1456. The shield shows three doves, each carrying an olive branch in its beak. The crest is an angel rising from a cloud and holding a platter with the head of St. John the Baptist, the guild’s patron saint. The motto reads, in the spelling of the day, “Delite in God and he shall give the thy desyre.”

The original Letters Patent still survive, which is rare for a document that old. They were illustrated in color in the memorial catalogue of the 1891 Heraldic Exhibition in Edinburgh, printed in 1892. The Tallow Chandlers themselves publish material on their arms, including the 1456 grant, on their coat of arms page.

Why does the missing angel matter?

On 29 January 1602 William Camden, Clarenceux King of Arms, confirmed the guild’s arms and changed them. He simplified the crest to St. John’s head in a charger and added two crowned angels as supporters. The angel had left the crest.

The carved arms on the Pillsbury fireplace still show the angel in the crest. That is the clue the report leans on: it suggests the chimneypiece dates from before 1602. The report adds a caution that the colors on the carving were probably repainted wrongly at some later date. It does not say when the piece was carved.

That is worth stating plainly, because our own earlier post gave 1476, the year the guild’s Dowgate Hill hall was established. The College of Arms is more careful: the carving predates 1602, and the piece is a remarkable survival from the sixteenth century.

Did the chimneypiece survive the Great Fire?

The report neither proves nor disproves the family story. It sets out the two possibilities. Tallow Chandlers’ Hall has stood on Dowgate Hill since 1476, and the medieval hall burned in the Great Fire of 1666; today’s hall dates from the rebuilding begun in 1672. So the chimneypiece may have been taken out after the 1602 change of arms, or it may have survived the Fire and been removed during the rebuilding. Either way, it is old.

How did the guild end up with two crests?

After 1602 the Tallow Chandlers kept using the old crest and the new one together, an arrangement nobody had authorized. It carried on until 9 November 1961, when the Kings of Arms formally confirmed the arms and allowed both crests, the angel crest on the viewer’s left and the simpler crest on the right. The guild’s heraldic tangle was fixed 505 years after the first grant.

See the chimneypiece for yourself

The stone chimneypiece is inside the mansion, now the Pillsbury Club, and the mansion tour is the way to see it. Book at Experiences and Tours, and read more of the house’s story in the History Journal.

Keep reading: What Should You Do in the Hour Before Your Trolley Tour at the Pillsbury Club?