A Tudor-era Business Closes After Almost 500 Years

A 480-year-old British shop announced last week it will close it's doors forever. This shop has survived two depressions, two world wars as well as three
recessions. On Friday, the Daily Mail reported that King Henry VIII was the
reigning monarch when the Gill & Company established its foundations as the
first ironmongers of the country in the year 1530. The shop had its base in
Oxford. Since then it has made a mark and retained the same in terms of one of
the oldest hardware stores of the country. A victim of worldwide recession, it
will be closing down next month month.

Being a native citizen of such an immature country, it is still difficult for me to wrap my brain around modern day people and institutions existing in ancient countries. Likewise, growing up and watching businesses be established, sell
their wares, and shutter their doors--sometimes within a year--makes the mere existence of a Gill & Co. a miracle to me. It sparks my imagination and entertains my brain.

Being human, we can never hope to meet historical figures from 1530, unless there is one hell of a fulfilling afterlife, complete with all our hypothetical dinner party guests. That's why visiting places and touching things that Henry
VIII and Anne Boleyn *may* have touched gives me such a thrill. It's the closest I can get to knowing them.

Gill & Co. began iron mongering in 1530. Let me give you a little perspective in terms of Tudor history, besides just "Henry VIII was the reigning monarch".

In 1530, Henry VIII was wildly in love with Anne Boleyn, lady-in-waiting to his wife, Queen Katherine of Aragon. He had petitioned Pope Clement VII for an annulment and was denied. It was at this time Henry began to consider breaking from Rome and would subsequently name himself head of the Church of England, initiating The Protestant Reformation.

Katherine of Aragon's nephew, Charles V, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1530, further threatening Henry's dream of repudiating his wife and having a legitimate son and heir with Anne. Katherine would live only one more year in the palaces of England.

For her part, Anne had been allowing the king to court her--never giving in to his advances--for the past five years. She survived a bout of the deadly sweating sickness and was now accompanying Henry on progress and hunting. Her greatest political
accomplishment had already taken place in the form of supplanting Cardinal Thomas Wolsey as Henry's closest confidant. Had Wolsey not died of illness in 1530, he likely would have been executed for treason.

It fascinates me that people who lived and reigned in 1530 could have known of Gill & Co. They could not, of course, imagine that almost 500 years later we, too,would know of Gill & Co. and the impending end of their historical business.