Exchange Alley, London

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Exchange Alley or Change Alley is a narrow alleyway connecting shops and coffeehouses in an old neighborhood of the City of London, England, bounded by Lombard Street, Cornhill and Birchin Lane. It served as a convenient shortcut from the Royal Exchange to the Post Office. The shops included ship chandlers, makers of instruments for navigation such as telescopes, and goldsmiths from Lombardy.

The coffee houses, especially Jonathan's and Garraway's, became an early venue for the lively trading of stocks and commodities. These activities were the progenitor of the London Stock Exchange. Similarly, Edward Lloyd's coffee house, originally on Tower Street, was the forerunner of Lloyd's of London.

[edit] History

[edit] See also

• City of London
• Lombard Street, London
• Cornhill, London
• Joint Stock Company
• South Sea Bubble
• London Stock Exchange

[edit] Literature

• John Biddulph Martin, "The Grasshopper" in Lombard Street, New York, Scribner & Welford (1892).
• Dianne Dugaw, "High Change in 'Change Alley': Popular Ballads and Emergent Capitalism in the Eighteenth Century", Eighteenth-Century Life, Vol. 22, Number 2 (May, 1998), pp. 43-58.
• The Diary of Samuel Pepys, May 28, 1663.
• “The English Coffee Houses”, Waes Hael Poetry & Tobacco Club. On Line.