Beaver Weathervane, St Helen's Place, Bishopsgate, London - Unique Weathervanes on Waymarking.com

One of a pair of splendid weathervanes at either end of St Helen's Place off Bishopsgate in the City of London. The beaver weathervane is a reminder of the Hudson's Bay Company, which was founded by a Royal Charter in 1670. The Charter granted a group of investors a monopoly on trade in the Hudson Bay region of North America, known as Rubert's Land and for centuries was dominant in the fur trade. The company's UK headquarters were here until its tercentenary in 1970. In 1869 the Company surrendered its ownership of the Rubert's Land territory to the Dominion of Canada in return for a payment and agricultural land, which it gradually sold to settlers. In succeeding years the Company shifted its focus to the retail trade, developing department stores in western Canada before expanding into the east in the second half of the twentieth century. During the 1980s the Company divested itself of its interests in the fur trade and peripheral concerns and concentrated fully on retailing.

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Date Logged Log User Rating   04/22/2011 Master Mariner visited it 11/04/2009 Norfolk12 visited it

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