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Exchange Alley or Change Alley is a narrow alleyway connecting shops and coffeehouses in an old neighbourhood of the City of London.[1] It served as a convenient shortcut from the Royal Exchange on Cornhill to the Post Office on Lombard Street and remains as one of a number of alleys linking the two streets. Shops once located in Exchange Alley included ship chandlers, makers of navigation instruments such as telescopes, and goldsmiths from Lombardy in Italy.
The 17th and 18th century coffeehouses[2] of Exchange Alley, especially Jonathan's and Garraway's, became an early venue for the lively trading of shares and commodities. These activities were the progenitor of the modern London Stock Exchange. Similarly, Lloyd's Coffee House, at No. 16 Lombard Street[3] but originally on Tower Street, was the forerunner of Lloyd's of London, the Lloyd's Register and Lloyd's List.
The nearest London Underground station is Bank and the closest mainline railway station is Cannon Street.
- ^ John Biddulph Martin, "The Grasshopper" in Lombard Street, New York, Scribner & Welford (1892).
- ^ J. Pelzer and L. Pelzer, "Coffee Houses of Augustan London," History Today, (October, 1982)|, p]]p. 40–47.
- ^ "The English Coffee Houses", Waes Hael Poetry & Tobacco Club. On Line. Archived 25 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine