St Mary's Guildhall

St Mary's Hall is a municipal building in Bayley Lane in Coventry, West Midlands, England.

[6] In November 1569, following the Catholic Rising of the North, Mary, Queen of Scots was rushed south from Tutbury Castle to Coventry.

[4] In January 1847, formerly enslaved person and famous American abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave a lecture at St. Mary's Guildhall during his speaking tour of Great Britain and Ireland.

It includes a lift to provide wheelchair access to the first floor, 360 degrees panoramic views of all the rooms on digital tour tablets and a medieval kitchen that was revealed to visitors for the first time in over a century.

[26] The building retains a collection of royal portraits from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, arms and armour and fine stained glass.

A marble statue of Lady Godiva by William Calder Marshall[27] is housed in an oriel with fragmented stained-glass windows off the Great hall.

[29] In 1861, the artist David Gee painted The Godiva Procession Leaving St Mary's Hall, which is now on display nearby in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry.

The St Mary’s Hall Coventry Tapestry: Weaving the Threads Together book will be launched in September 2024, featuring proceedings from the conference and new images.

Lady Godiva statue in the Guildhall.
Ceiling and tapestry in the Guildhall.