Cambridge, Guilds & Learning
Master Corin Hatherleigh
Surveyor
The man behind the survey copies on which London’s bridge loans and warehouse schemes rest; when they arrive late, the warehouse men know whose name to mutter.
Master Corin Hatherleigh belongs to money London, the city that keeps its memory in counting halls and memoranda rather than in abstract founder-lists. His survey copies are read more often in bridge loans and warehouse schemes than in polite biography, and the books name him in the same breath as Lady Beatrice Vane, whose subscriptions travel through the same serious papers. His authority is of the documentary kind, felt in the pages on which lending and building schemes rest rather than in any public figure he cuts.
He is counted among the recognisable faces of guild London, and not always fondly: warehouse men mutter about Corin Hatherleigh when survey copies arrive late. A company whose business touches a bridge loan, a warehouse scheme or a site the money city is weighing may find that the matter waits, as the warehouse men do, on his copies, and that nothing moves on the quay or in the counting hall until they arrive.
In person
No portrait of Corin Hatherleigh’s face is given in the sources. He is known by office and paper rather than by presence: a master of the money city whose survey copies circulate in loan and warehouse business, and whose name is spoken most often in the tone of men waiting for a document.