Upholders' Company apprenticeships

This company was in existence by 1360. Members of the Company engaged in various trades, as well as upholsterers, often being dealers in old clothes, furniture and pawnbrokers.

The records of this company are deposited at the Guildhall Library. There is only one register of apprenticeships which gives details. This manuscript (Guildhall Library Ms 7142/1) only covers 1704-72. It also contains freedom admissions 1698-1773. Later registers of freedom admissions do not give details of apprenticeship, and neither do the court minutes of the Company, which survive from 1678. Until about 1764, the register notes in the margin those apprentices who subsequently became free, and this information has been given in this index.

The freedom admissions of the Company 1698-1803 have been abstracted by K.M. Walton and printed in index form in the Journal of the Furniture History Society Vol. IX, 1973. A copy of this list is available in the Society of Genealogists' Library. A list of masters of the Company appears on their web site (hhtp://www.upholders.co.uk).

The records of 1,319 Upholders' apprenticeships have been abstracted.