New Exchange

New Exchange, situate in the Strand near Durham-Yard. It is built in the place where were formerly a row of Stables belonging to Durham House. It was first built as it now appears by the Earl of Salisbury, and contains about 150 Shops above and below Stairs, about 76 of which are let out to several Milleners and some Mercers, &c. The Front towards the Strand is adorned with Columns of the Ionick Order and the Rents are now paid to several Proprietors who hold the same by Lease from the said Earl of Salisbury, and is therefore by some called Salisbury Exchange.

New Exchange. In the Place where certain old Stables stood, belonging to this House is the New Exchange being furnished with Shops on both Sides the Walks, both below and above Stairs, for Milleners, Sempstresses, and other Trades that furnish Dresses; and is a Place of great Resort and Trade for the Nobility and Gentry, and such as have Occasion for such Commodities.

New Exchange, a kind of bazaar on the south side of the Strand, was so called in contradistinction to the Royal Exchange; by James I. it was named Britain's Burse. It was built on the site of the stables of Durham House, directly facing what is now Bedford Street, its frontage extending from George Court to Durham Street—or from 52 to 64, according to the present numbering, Messrs. Coutts's bank occupying nearly the centre of the site.

In the place where certain old stables stood belonging to this house [Durham House] is the New Exchange, being furnished with shops on both sides the walls, both below and above stairs, for milleners, sempstresses, and other trades, that furnish dresses; and is a place of great resort and trade for the nobility and gentry, and such as have occasion for such commodities.—Strype, B. vi. p. 75.

The first stone was laid June 10, 1608; in the following July Chamberlain reports to Dudley Carleton that "the New Burse proceeds apace,"¹ and the building was opened April 11, 1609, in the presence of James I. and his Queen, "when," says Antony Munday, "it pleased his most excellent Majesty, because the work wanted a name, to entitle it Britain's Burse." It was long before the New Exchange attained to any great degree of favour or trade. London was not then large enough for more than one structure of the kind, and the merchants of the City who brought from abroad the commodities most in demand reserved them for the upper walks of their own Royal Exchange. There was a talk of letting or selling it with a view to its conversion into a dwelling.

December 20, 1623.—Lady Hatton is said to have bought Britain's Burse for £6000, and means to make the upper part her dwelling house; the lower part lets for £320 a year.—Chamberlain to Carleton (Cal. State Pap., 1623–1625, p. 132).

I asked the number of the Plaguey Bill,
Asked if the Customs Farmers held out still;
Whether the Britain's Burse did fill apace,
And like were to give th' Exchange disgrace.
Donne, Elegie xvi.

At the Restoration, when London was as large again as it had been in the early part of the reign of James I., Covent Garden became the fashionable quarter of the town—the merchants' wives and daughters aped the manners of the West End ladies—and the New Exchange in the Strand supplanted the Old Exchange in the City. So popular was it at this time that there is scarce a dramatist of the Charles II. era who is without a reference to the New Exchange—one indeed, Thomas Duffet by name, was originally a milliner here before he took to the stage for subsistence. It ceased, however, to be much frequented soon after the death of Queen Anne, and in 1737 it was taken down. A memory of its existence was preserved in Exchange Court immediately opposite.

We are in the last place to give notice of certain ladies called Coursers, whose recreation lies very much upon the New Exchange about 6 o'clock at night; where you may fit yourself with ware of all sorts and sizes. But take heed of my Lady Sandys, for she sweeps the Exchange like a chain'd Bullet, with Mr. Howard in one hand and Fitz-James in the other.—News from the New Exchange, 4to, 1650.

We have a picture of it in the reign of Charles II. by a careful hand.

We went to see the New Exchange, which is not far from the place of the Common Garden, in the great street called the Strand. The building has a facade of stone, built after the Gothic style, which has lost its colour from age and become blackish. It contains two long and double galleries, one above the other, in which are distributed in several rows great numbers of very rich shops of drapers and mercers filled with goods of every kind, and with manufactures of the most beautiful description. These are for the most part under the care of well-dressed women, who are busily employed in work, although many are served by young men called apprentices.—Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo, vol. iii. p. 296.

There is much that is worth mentioning connected with the New Exchange. At the Eagle and Child, in Britain's Burse, the first edition of Othello was sold by Thomas Walkley in 1622. At the sign of the Three Spanish Gypsies lived Thomas Radford and his wife, the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy. They sold wash-balls, powder, gloves, etc., and taught plain work to girls. Humble occupation indeed, and they failed in it: "he broke long before '52 and went to sea," but the wife was destined before long for a more conspicuous station—marrying in 1652 (her first husband, if alive being far away) General Monk, a name of importance in English history. She had been his sempstress, carrying him his linen, and obtained great control over him. She died Duchess of Albemarle a few days after the Duke, and is interred by his side in Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey. At the Pope's Head in the Lower Walk lived Will Cademan, the player and play publisher. "At the sign of the Blue Anchor in the Lower Walk in the New Exchange" Henry Herringman had his shop—the chief publisher in London before the time of Tonson. Here Mr. and Mrs. Pepys were frequently to be seen. Here Wycherley has laid a scene in his Country Wife, and Etherege a scene in his She Would if She Could. Here Mrs. Brainsick in Dryden's Limberham is represented as giving her husband the slip, pretending to call at her tailor's "to try her stays for a new gown;" and here, at the Revolution in 1688, sat for a few days the famous White Widow—no less a person in rank than Frances Jennings, Duchess of Tyrconnell, wife of Richard Talbot, Lord Deputy of Ireland under James II.

It is said that the Duchess of Tyrconnell, being reduced to absolute want on her arrival in England, and unable for some time to procure secret access to her family, hired one of the stalls under the Royal Exchange [Pennant tells it of the New], and maintained herself by the sale of small articles of haberdashery. She wore a white dress wrapping her whole person, and a white mask which she never removed, and excited much interest and curiosity.—Horace Walpole.

This Duchess of Tyrconnell (d. 1730) was the Frances Jennings of De Grammont's Memoirs, and sister to Sarah Jennings, wife of the great Duke of Marlborough. The New Exchange was divided into four several places: the Outward Walk below Stairs; the Inner Walk below Stairs; the Outward Walk above Stairs, and the Inner Walk above Stairs.² The Lower Walk was long a common place of assignation. In the Upper Walk you were met with cries such as Otway has preserved to us in his character of Mrs. Furnish, "Gloves or ribbands, sir? Very good gloves or ribbands. Choice of fine essences." In the cellars was a tavern. The houses in the Strand over against the Exchange door³ were chiefly let to country gentlewomen newly come to town, who loved to lodge in the very centre of the fashion. "That place," says Pert in Sir Fopling Flutter, "is never without a nest of 'em. They are always, as one goes by, glaring in balconies or staring out of windows." The walks formed a favourite promenade. Here the fop about town exhibited his new suit of clothes, and conversed with the women at the stalls in the unceremonious manner of his age.⁴

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¹ Cal. State Pap., 1603–1610, p. 446.
² Rate-books of St. Martin's, under 1673.
³ Tatler, No. 26.
⁴ Spectator, No.155.

The New Exchange (The site of Nos. 54–64, Strand).

By a complicated series of transactions extending over the years 1603–10, the Earl of Salisbury obtained possession of a piece of ground about 208 feet in length by 60 feet in depth on the south side of the Strand between York House and the gatehouse of Durham Place.²⁶ There, on the site of the old stables which, according to Stow,ⁿ³⁰¹ had become "but a low ruin … ready to fall, and very unsightly," Salisbury erected "a very goodly and beautiful building ... after the fashion of the Royall Exchange in London, with Sellers underneath, a walke fairely paved above it, and Rowes of Shops above, as also one beneath answerable in manner to the other, and intended for the like trades and mysteries."

According to the illustrations on Plate 58 the building consisted of two storeys, the lower having an open arcade which, on the plan from the Smithson collection reproduced here, is described as a "Closter," and figured 201 feet in length and 21 feet in width. Behind the arcade was ranged a long double row of shops with a central gangway 10 feet wide. There were three entrances from the Strand, and at each end staircases led to the upper floor. In the rear was a yard extending on the western side to a greater depth and including further buildings southwards.

The front of the market was apparently erected in brick with stone dressings and divided into bays by pilasters, which treatment, according to the Smithson drawing (Plate 58a), was repeated to the upper storey, finishing above the parapet with ball terminals. The central bay and the two wings were carried up to form gables. The Smithson drawing, which shows the design of only half of the front of the building, represents a rather ornamental exterior with scrolls and details of the Jacobean period of architecture, and the general effect is light and spirited. It is, however, doubtful whether the design according to the Smithson drawing was ever carried out, as in the later engraving by Harris (Plate 58b), the pilasters to the upper storey are omitted and a high parapet is shown, linking up pedimented dormers in a steep pitched roof. Yet though the whole front bears a more severe appearance, the basis of the Smithson design can be seen.

The third view of the building, reproduced on Plate 58c, is from an ink and wash drawing in the Council's collection. It shows all the windows as square headed, and differs in several other details from the Harris engraving and is probably of a later date. The drawing was originally in the Gardner collection, and it seems likely that the drawing of the New Exchange by T.H. Shepherd, which is now in the Westminster Public Library,²⁷ was made from it.

The illustration (Plate 60) showing the interior of the New Exchange probably represents the treatment of the principal room on the upper floor.

The building was completed in November, 1608,²⁸ and in the April following it was officially opened by the King.ⁿ⁹³ James I suggested that it should be called Britain's Burse, but the name did not catch on, and the building was usually referred to as the New Exchange. A list of orders was issued for its government, which provided that the only persons allowed to keep shops there were haberdashers, stocking-sellers, linen-drapers, seamsters, goldsmiths, jewellers, milliners, perfumers, silk mercers, tiremakers, hoodmakers, stationers, booksellers,²⁹ confectioners, girdlers and those who sold china ware, pictures, maps or prints. The shops were to be open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. in summer, and 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. in winter.ⁿ⁹³ The citizens of London at first opposed the enterprise as a possible rival to the Royal Exchange,ⁿ⁶² but their objections were overruled and were, indeed, ill-founded. The New Exchange did not meet with the success which was expected, though it enjoyed a considerable vogue in the reign of Charles II, when it became a favourite resort of ladies and their beaux. On 27th October, 1666, Pepys recorded that he and his wife took Mrs. Pierce and her boy and Knipp there, and "my wife bought things, and I did give each of them a pair of Jesimy plain gloves and another of white. Here Knipp and I walked up and down to see handsome faces, and did see several." Many such visits are mentioned in the Diary.³⁰

The New Exchange survived until 1737,³¹ though little is heard of it during the last few years of its existence. Eleven houses were built on the site, the centre and largest of which (afterwards numbered 59, Strand) was leased to George Middleton, goldsmith, the flourishing banking business of the firm of Middleton and Campbell being moved thither from the Three Crowns near Hungerford Market. Middleton died in 1747, and his brother-in-law, George Campbell, in 1761. Neither of them left a male heir, and the firm passed into the hands of the brothers, James and Thomas Coutts,³² the elder of whom had married George Campbell's niece. No. 59 remained the "shop" of Coutts' Bank until 1904. The premises were extended to include Nos. 58, 57 and 56 early in the nineteenth century. Plans of the three houses are given on Plate 62a.

The 11 houses were designed as a comprehensive composition and comprised three storeys over shops and basement. They had a plain brick front relieved with a stone modillion cornice above the second-floor windows. No. 59 had a break forward with a pedimented front and formed the central feature of the block; the end houses forming the wings, though of less frontage, were treated in a complementary manner. A good illustration of the whole front as it was in 1852 is shown on Plate 59.

No. 55 had a wood staircase continuing in short flights around a top-lighted well. It had turned balusters and newels with a straight string and panelled dado. These details were typical of the staircases in the other houses.

No. 59 (Coutts' Bank) formerly had a pedimented doorcase to the private house. A doorway inserted in one of the windows formed the bank entrance (Plate 57b), but when No. 58 was added to it a stone front to the ground storey was introduced, which was divided into bays by Greek Doric pilasters supporting an entablature (Plate 59). Internal alterations were also carried out consequent upon the linking-up of the houses. The rooms generally were panelled and the mantelpieces carved. When the houses were demolished some of the panelling and mantelpieces were retained by the Council and are now preserved at the Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch.

No. 59 had a stone staircase with iron bar balustrading. The doors leading from the landing on the first floor had good semicircular fanlights with radiating bars in lead and iron (Plate 65a), and there were also some elliptical borrowed lights in the walls to the staircase of a similar nature. In the basement was a cast-lead cistern with interlaced ribs on the front forming three decorative panels—the centre contained initials M/GM and the date 17–9 along the top (Plate 63a).

Thomas Coutts employed the brothers Adam, who were recommended to him by Lord Bute, an important customer at the bank, to reconstruct and redecorate his apartments. At various times between 1775 and 1817 Coutts bought most of the houses between John Street and William Street, and in 1799 he obtained authority by Act of Parliament to throw a bridge across William Street, thus connecting the two parts of the bank. The bridge (Plate 68b), which is of brick and stone, was designed by William Adam. The fee simple is now the property of the Council, and during the erection of the new premises on the site of Coutts' old bank, arrangements were made for this charming bridge to be preserved.

The famous Chinese wallpaper, which Lord Macartney brought back from China and presented to Thomas Coutts, was removed from the old drawing-room and fixed in the board room of the new bank premises across the Strand, as was also one of the eighteenth-century marble mantelpieces.

It should be recorded that when the Adelphi scheme was being prepared, Mr. Coutts made special arrangements with the Adams to preserve the view from his back windows which overlooked the river.

All the 11 houses were demolished in 1923, and the front portion of the site was used to increase the width of the Strand.

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²⁶ Salisbury did not buy the ground directly from the Bishop of Durham, but from the Bishop's grantees. The indentures, most of which are preserved at Hatfield, do not contain any measurements, those given here being adduced from the measurements of the houses later erected on the site. In addition to the actual site of the Exchange the Earl obtained a grant of sufficient of the courtyard to make a lane behind the Exchange extending down to the river on the west side of Durham Place. In 1609 he granted to Thomas Wilson a lease of a piece of ground eight yards in depth and seven in breadth on which to build a house behind the Exchange and adjoining the wall of York House garden. This house Wilson afterwards sublet to Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquary. It is marked on the 1626 plan (p. 92).

²⁷ The drawing is reproduced in Some Famous Buildings and Their Story, by A. W. Clapham and W. H. Godfrey, which gives an account of the New Exchange.

²⁸ The Act of Parliament authorising its erection was not passed until 1610.

²⁹ The first edition of Othello was published by Thomas Walkley in 1622 at the Eagle and Child in Britian's Burse, and Henry Herringman, who printed Dryden's early plays, had his shop in the "Lower Walk in the New Exchange."

³⁰ An interesting account of the New Exchange is given in The Adelphi by Charles Pendrill.

³¹ "All the Shopkeepers who liv'd in the new Exchange in the Strand, having quitted the same, pursuant to notices given them some time ago, the Workmen began yesterday to pull it down, in order to build Houses instead thereof."—London Evening Post, 10th December, 1737.

³² For a detailed history of Coutts' Bank and its clientele, the reader is referred to the various books on the subject, e.g., Coutts', by R. M. Robinson, and Thomas Coutts, by E. H. Coleridge.


ⁿ⁶² Index to the Remembrancia of the City of London.

ⁿ⁹³ Cal. of S.P.Dom.

ⁿ³⁰¹ Stow's Survey, 1618 edn.