Experience Haberdashers' Hall as you've never seen it before and deep dive into the history of this Great XII Livery Company, with our new interactive virtual tour.

The Haberdasher's Company is delighted to open up our Hall to the public so that they can learn more about its historic ties to the past, as well as its current work and focus on the future. 

You can follow the adventure here.

How it came about:

At a meeting of the Fine Arts Committee in the Autumn of 2021 the Clerk described to the Committee his Regiment’s interactive virtual tour of their Northern Cavalry Museum. The Committee agreed to investigate the application of a similar ‘interactive’ aspect to our own Company virtual tour that would allow enhancement and understanding of individual artworks, sculptures and antiques in the Hall.

It was also hoped that by making such an interactive video we could make a visit to the Hall possible for those unable to come in person and reach out to our younger members who would feel at home browsing through such an interactive online resource.

So it was that looking to achieve this we entered into a collaboration with the firm Heritage Interactive and specifically their principal designer Sarah Jackson. In fact it was Sarah who had worked on the  Northern Cavalry Museum.

The process of making this interactive video was detailed and surprisingly time consuming, it ran throughout 2022 and wasn’t complete until the start of 2023. This was due to the complexity of technically scanning of the Hall for the creation of interactive hot links. A process in fact often used by archaeologists when scanning in 3D the interior of a tomb in Egypt! Also the scripting of the interactive links which included recordings of six Company members to camera.

The video uses a virtual ‘Matterport’ environment to present the scan of the Hall. This allows a user to navigate around the building at will. There are a variety of hot links located throughout the tour, the recordings by members and also photographic and textual information provided in other links.

Dr David Bartle, 

Company Archivist and Member of the Freedom

(Oct 2023)