In Plain Sight: Annabell Furner, Medieval Grocer

Portrait of Annabell Furner — Mia, Year 5, St Mary's RC Primary School

In 1437, a woman walked into an Italian bank in London and bought £38 of saffron. That single purchase was worth roughly six years' wages for a skilled craftsman. Her name was Annabell Furner, and until recently, almost nobody had heard of her.

Annabell was likely the widow of John Furner, a member of the Worshipful Company of Grocers — the ancient livery company that controlled the import and sale of spices, dyes and drugs in medieval London. After her husband's death, Annabell did not retreat from public life. She continued trading, buying saffron and cotton in extraordinary quantities from Filippo Borromei and Co., an Italian merchant bank operating on Lombard Street. She was fined by the Grocers' Company. She was listed alongside men who had not paid for the Company's annual feast. She had obligations, and she met them.

She was, in every meaningful sense, a grocer. Her story and the student artwork it inspired can now be explored in the online exhibition.

Hidden between two archives

What makes Annabell's story remarkable is not just what she did, but how close it came to being lost entirely. Her name appears in two separate archives: the Grocers' Company Black Book, the Company's own record of members and their obligations, researched by Dr Helen Clifford, Company Historian; and the Borromei Bank ledgers, the financial records of an Italian bank in London, digitised by the late Professor Jim Bolton of Queen Mary University of London and Professor Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli of the University of Florence through the Borromei Bank Research Project. Their two decades of work made it possible to search the accounts of over 750 individuals recorded in the bank's London and Bruges ledgers — and it was in those records that Annabell's trading activity came to light.

Neither archive tells her full story alone. It was only by connecting the two — the guild records that show she had status within the Company, and the bank ledgers that reveal the scale of her trading — that the picture of Annabell as a businesswoman emerged. That connection was made by Yvette Reinfor, Founder of More Curricular CIC, who brought the sources together as part of a heritage education programme for London schools.

Why this matters for Women's History Month

Women's History Month is often a time for celebrating well-known figures. But some of the most important stories are those that have not yet been told — the ones hidden in plain sight within historical records, waiting for someone to look closely enough.

Annabell Furner was not a queen or a noblewoman. She was a tradeswoman. She operated within the structures of medieval commerce at a time when a woman's ability to trade independently depended almost entirely on her status as a widow. The Common Law principle of coverture meant that married women could not own property, enter contracts or conduct business in their own name. Widowhood, paradoxically, was the route to economic independence.

This is exactly the kind of complexity that heritage education can open up for young people. Not a simple story of progress, but a real encounter with how power, gender and law shaped everyday lives six hundred years ago.

How students from two London schools brought Annabell Furner, medieval grocer, back to life through art

In March 2026, students from Mossbourne Community Academy in Hackney and St Mary's RC Primary School in Battersea were invited to respond to Annabell's story through art. They worked with primary historical sources — the same guild records and bank ledgers that revealed her existence — and chose from three themes: The Portrait (imagining what she looked like), The Evidence (responding to the documents themselves) and The Symbolic (drawing on the visual language of medieval manuscripts).

No portrait of Annabell survives. No painting, no sketch, no description of her face. Some students chose to imagine her for the first time in nearly six hundred years. Others responded to the evidence of her trade — the spices, the records, the world she moved through.

The results were exhibited at Grocers' Hall, the home of the Worshipful Company of Grocers on Princes Street in the City of London. For the Mossbourne students, the visit carried a particular resonance: Mossbourne Community Academy stands on the site of the Grocers' Company School, founded in 1876 in Hackney, and the Worshipful Company of Grocers remains the principal sponsor of the Mossbourne Federation today. These students were returning to the Hall of the Company that founded the school on the site where they now learn.

Heritage education and critical thinking

Heritage education at its best does not simply transmit facts. It asks young people to think like historians: to weigh evidence, to question what is missing, to make connections between sources that were never meant to be read together. The Annabell Furner project asked students to do all of this — and then to respond creatively.

One student, Sahaaya from Mossbourne, described the experience as "trying to figure out a puzzle without all the puzzle pieces." That is precisely what historical research is. The records that survive are fragments. The historian's task — and in this project, the student's task — is to piece them together into something meaningful while being honest about what remains unknown.

This is critical thinking in action: not abstract reasoning exercises, but real engagement with real sources about a real person whose story was almost lost.

A story that belongs to everyone

As Brigadier Greville Bibby CBE, Clerk of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, reflected: the Grocers' Company is living history, and by learning about those who went before us, we can live more enriched and better lives ourselves.

Annabell Furner bought saffron, paid fines, missed a feast and then disappeared from the records. For nearly six hundred years, that was the end of her story. Now, through the work of two London schools and the archives that preserved her name, she is remembered — not as a footnote, but as a woman who traded, who endured and who mattered.

Visit the In Plain Sight: Annabell Furner, Medieval Grocer online exhibition to see all 21 pieces of student artwork, read the historical evidence, watch the exhibition day film and hear from the students and teachers who brought her story back to life.

In Plain Sight: Annabell Furner, Medieval Grocer was a More Curricular CIC heritage exhibition at Grocers' Hall, London, for Women's History Month 2026. More Curricular CIC delivers heritage education programmes across London, working with schools, councils and cultural organisations to bring hidden histories to life through critical thinking and creative response.