Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
Builders merchants and suppliers – members of the Worshipful Company of Builders Merchants – took part in the wettest Lord Mayor’s Show for years to welcome Alderman Fiona Woolf CBE as the 686th Lord Mayor of London.
The company’s float, number 13 in the parade, took the theme of ‘Supplying Britain’s Building Needs’ and those walking in the parade gave out bright yellow hard hats and rulers with the slogan on to the assembled soggy crowds.
There were six vehicles in the Float show ‘Builders’ Merchants through the Ages’ starting with a Handcart circa 1813; a Ridgeons’ Dray drawn by two Suffolk Punch Horses; Buildbase’s Model T 1920; Buttle’s 1934 truck; a Calor Gas 1950s truck; and a large, brand new Lawsons’ flat-bed.
28 suppliers dressed up in appropriate building-material costumes, from drainage gratings and lintels to rolls of insulation and clay pipes, while 30 liverymen from the Company walked the route dressed in old fashioned “Arkwright” brown coats and flat caps.
Other members of the Company and the industry watched the parade from the Grandstand at St Paul’s Cathedral or along the route.
Fiona Woolf is an honorary member of the Worshipful Company of Builders Merchants and only the second woman to ever hold the post of Lord Mayor of London.
