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A man called Sir Thomas Gresham, known as
the father of English banking, set up the Royal Exchange in a place called Cornhill in London. This was the first purpose-built centre for trading stocks and shares
in London. However, it is said that the stock brokers, the men who did the trading, were not allowed inside the building because of their rude manners, instead they
would operate from nearby coffee houses.
Trade around the world was now a big thing and soon London would become the financial capital of Europe.
And, in a weird stroke of coincidence, when I started work in 1969 I worked for a company called the Royal Exchange Assurance Company who had their
Head Office in that same Royal Exchange building. Well not quite that building as the original one was destroyed by fire and subsequently rebuilt but on the same
spot.
It is also the place where, even today, Royal Proclamations are read out by either a herald or a town crier.
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