The building is in the ownership of the National Trust, which has leased it to King's Lynn and West Norfolk borough council for hire as a music, performances, lectures and entertainment venue.

[1][2][3] In 1406 the Guild of St George, founded in 1376, acquired re-claimed land on the bank of the River Great Ouse to build its hall.

In the late 17th century the brick-vaulted wine cellar was made in the undercroft, and access to this was continued under the later warehouses towards the river.

[3] The earliest record of a theatrical production is of a nativity play before a Guild feast in January 1445 featuring William, the barber in Grassmarket, and Richard Comber.

Recent academic research by Professor Matthew Woodcock, at the University of East Anglia, has supported the local tradition that William Shakespeare played at the guildhall with the Earl of Pembroke's Men in 1593 when London theatres were closed by the plague.

[a][3] Shakespeare's leading comic actor, Robert Armin, was born in King's Lynn in 1565, the family living in what is now 78 High Street.

Armin was the first Feste in Twelfth Night, Autolycus in A Winter's Tale and the Fool in King Lear, and is credited with being a major influence on Shakespeare.

Successful in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, and gaining Royal warrants for their work at Sandringham House,[6] the business declined with the advent of cinema.

[8] Everyone interested in Shakespeare and in the theatres of his time must feel a thrill of excitement at the discovery of the only surviving boards on which he is likely to have performed In 2019 the guildhall was declared the priority project of the Town Deal for King's Lynn[10] and a development plan for the area was finalised.

[19] In August 2024, a 600-year-old doorway, thought to be the entrance to a dressing room once used by Shakespeare, was discovered when two noticeboards and layers of plasterboard were removed from a wall on the ground floor.