Exeter Exchange

Exeter-Change, Strand,—at 355, near the middle of the N. side, about ⅜ of a mile on the R. from Temple-bar, extending under the archway to Burleigh-st.

Exeter 'Change, in the Strand, stood where Burleigh Street now stands, and extended into the main road, so that the foot thoroughfare of one side of the Strand ran directly through it; this was only open however in the daytime, the gates being closed at night. From an incidental notice in Barry's Lecture of December 1792 we learn that the Strand at this point was nine paces between the edges of the foot-ways. In the stone architrave above the window at the east end of the building was the inscription Exeter 'Change, 1676.¹ Delaune, in 1681 (p. 160), speaks of it as lately built.

This Exchange contains two walks below stairs, and as many above, with shops on each side for sempsters, milliners, hosiers, etc., the builders judging it would come in great request; but it received a check in its infancy, I suppose by those of the New Exchange, so that instead of growing in better esteem, it became worse and worse; insomuch that the shops in the first walk next the street can hardly meet with tenants, those backwards lying useless, and those above converted to other uses.—R.B., in Strype, B. iv. p. 119.

Later there were book-stalls among the standings of miscellaneous dealers. Robert Bloomfield in a letter to "Catherine Bloomfield, Metford, Norfolk," dated January 31, 1802, says, "Last night in passing through Exeter 'Change, I stopt at a book-stall and observed the Farmer's Boy laying there for sale, and the new book too, marked with very large writing, Bloomfield's Rural Tales: a young man took it up, and I observed he read the whole of the preface through, and perhaps little thought that the author stood at his elbow."

The rooms above were hired for offices by the managers of the Land Bank, and subsequently let for general purposes. The body of the poet Gay lay in state in the upper room of Exeter 'Change; and when Dodsley drew up his London, in 1761, "the large room above was used for auctions." In January 1772 the remains of Lord Baltimore, who had died abroad, lay in state in the great room of Exeter 'Change, and on the 22nd were removed for interment in the family vault at Epsom. His lordship was very unpopular, and directly the body was removed, the mob broke in and plundered the room. In the Gardner Collection is an old card inscribed "Polito's menagerie, Exeter Change," and in the early part of the present century the proprietor was a well-known man named Clark. The last tenant of the upper rooms was Mr. Cross, whose menagerie occupied "the entire range of the floor above Exeter 'Change;" and here, in March 1826, Chunee, the famous elephant, was shot. An interesting account of the death of this elephant is given in Hone's Every-Day Book (vol. ii. p. 322). Thomas Hood, in his young days a frequent visitor to the menagerie, wrote a poetic "Address to Mr. Cross on the Death of the Elephant," and in it he records this animal's playfulness and sagacity, and adds, "And well he loved me till his life was done." Lord Byron, too, records a visit to Exeter 'Change "to see the tigers sup." "Such a conversazione! There was a hippopotamus like Lord Liverpool in the face; and the ursine sloth had the very voice and manner of my valet" (Fletcher).² [See Surgeons, College of.] Exeter 'Change was taken down in the Strand improvements of 1829.³

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¹ J.H. Burn in Gentleman's Magazine, November 1853, p. 487.
² Byron's Works, ed. 1832, voL ii. p. 256.
³ There is an admirable representation of old Exeter 'Change drawn and engraved by George Cooke.