A history of the Royal Exchange

The Royal Exchange has sat on this very spot in Cornhill for over 450 years, having survived two devastating fires, two world wars and decades of disuse in the 1900s.

Today, people come here to splash some cash on high-end shops and restaurants. But for hundreds of years, this landmark was a lively gathering place for traders of many nationalities and specialisms.

Founded in 1571, the Royal Exchange was part shopping mall, part trading floor. Traders gathered to buy and sell global goods and stocks. Business deals made within its walls fuelled the growth and power of the British empire.

Before the Royal Exchange, the City’s merchants didn’t have a specific place to gather and trade. They would meet in market buildings, taverns and even out in the open on Lombard Street, where they’d brave all the extremes of British weather.

The idea to have a building constructed especially for trading came from Antwerp, in present-day Belgium. Influential British merchant Thomas Gresham was based at Antwerp’s ‘bourse’, a purpose-built trading venue, in the mid-1500s. He financed a similar gathering place for international merchants back home.

London’s four-storey bourse was officially opened on 23 January 1571 by Queen Elizabeth I. She proclaimed that the building should be called the Royal Exchange and gave it a license to sell alcohol.

London finally had its meeting point for merchants and traders. In this busy print by 17th-century artist Wenceslaus Hollar, you can see its courtyard packed with people, including merchants from Russia and Turkey. Imagine the noise – and the many different languages – reverberating around the space.

The Exchange was open six days a week. There were two one-hour trading sessions per day, which were marked by ringing the bell in the belltower. While it was a mostly male space, some women also worked there as seamstresses and shopkeepers. Hollar has also drawn a woman ballad-seller selling her wares.

You could find out all sorts of information at the Royal Exchange. News about the latest bankruptcies, daily stock and commodity prices and ship arrivals and departures were pinned to its walls and pillars. Around the building, street sellers roamed the area flogging pamphlets and newspapers.

Gresham’s Royal Exchange was unusual as it also had shops on the upper floor, making it effectively one of the country’s first shopping malls. Goldsmiths, armourers and apothecaries all sold their wares there.

The Exchange became a Tudor tourist attraction. Visitors watched merchants trade in the morning and evening sessions, then picked up souvenirs or little knick-knacks from the shops upstairs.

The area immediately around the building developed into spaces for trade and business, indicating just how important the Royal Exchange was. Brokers and merchants gathered in the many coffee houses that sprung up nearby. The Bank of England moved in over the road on Threadneedle Street in 1734.

The Cornhill area also became a centre for bookmaking by 1600. Specialist books and pamphlets were sold to serve those who worked in international trade. You could pick up maps, travel books and guides among other works, like the 1598 publication of William Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost.

The Great Fire of London of 1666 destroyed the Royal Exchange – along with the Guildhall, St Paul’s Cathedral, 13,200 houses and 87 churches. The noise of the fire ripping through the galleries was so loud it was as if “there had been a thousand iron chariots beating upon the stones”, according to Londoner Thomas Vincent.

The 109 shops previously crammed into the upper floor had to find lodgings elsewhere. Many of them moved temporarily to Gresham College, an education centre named after Thomas Gresham on Bishopsgate, just north of where the fire stopped.

The new Royal Exchange building was designed by architect and City of London surveyor Edward Jerman. It opened to merchants in 1669.

Disaster struck again in January 1838. A second fire, probably caused by an overheated stove, destroyed the Exchange.

Architect William Tite designed the third and present building in a classical style, featuring towering columns and a vast portico, a covered entrance found in ancient Greek temples. Queen Victoria officially opened the building in 1844.

London grew dramatically from the 1600s to the 1800s – in size, wealth and power. The merchants and brokers who traded at the Royal Exchange were a driving force in the city’s expansion. The building itself was a key base for Britain’s trade and colonial campaigns.

Different areas of the Exchange were associated with particular traded goods or regions. The south-west corner, for example, was the meeting place of merchants from British colonial America.

The British trade in enslaved Africans was inseparable from the day-to-day business of the Royal Exchange. In the 1700s, the building was leased to insurance companies, like Lloyd’s of London and Royal Exchange Assurance, that enabled British ships to transport enslaved people across continents. Merchants and brokers also profited from this exploitation.

Trading continued at the Royal Exchange until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The building was damaged by German bombs during the Blitz.

In January 1941, a bomb dropped right in front of the building, falling into Bank Station and killing 50 Londoners sheltering underground. Traders moved out after the war ended in 1945.

In 2001, after decades of disuse, the Exchange was redeveloped into a luxury shopping mall. It’s a nod to its past, just with a higher price tag.