There are hundreds of coffee houses all over London, but did you know how pivotal they were in creating today’s London?

How the first coffee house came to London

The coffee house arrived in the City of London in 1652—and changed everything. These early coffee houses were revolutionary social institutions that fundamentally transformed British commerce, politics, and intellectual life.

Coffee first arrived in London through Armenian and Greek merchants. The earliest recorded coffee house opened around 1652 in St. Michael’s Alley, Cornhill, run by a Greek man called Pasqua Rosée.

London’s coffee house boom

Soon the exotic Turkish beverage – pitched as a health tonic – took London by storm. By 1700, there were over 500 coffee houses in London (some estimates put that number at 700), with a particularly dense concentration in the City.

They became the City’s beating heart: a hub for conversations, trade, gossip and politics over the black, bitter drink (milk in coffee was to be a much later innovation).

Image source: https://mapco.net/cornhill/fire.htm

How Lloyd’s of London was born in a coffee house

One of the most famous coffee houses was Edward Lloyd’s establishment on Lombard Street. It was a meeting point for ship captains, merchants, and maritime insurers to share shipping news and conduct business. And so Lloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest insurance market, was born.

Image source: Wikimedia

The birth of the London Stock Exchange

Equally important was Jonathan’s Coffee House in Exchange Alley, where brokers met to sell shares, government bonds, and commodities. And so the London Stock Exchange was born, although it’s not the oldest stock exchange – that was the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

The legacy of London’s coffee houses

By the late 18th century, the golden age of coffee houses began to wane. There was a new exotic beverage on the scene: tea, the drink that would end up a defining component of British identity. But that’s another story.

The legacy of those old coffee houses, though, endures in the City of London continued role as a global financial centre. Those dark, smoky, bustling rooms where deals and fortunes were made have long disappeared, but they are what the City of London was built on.

Today’s cafés might serve flat whites and cold brew, but the real legacy of London’s coffee culture lives on in the institutions it helped create—and a few blue plaques here and there for the curious explorer: the Lloyds Coffee House blue plaque is here; the Pasqua Rosee Coffee House blue Plaque is here.

And here is the blue plaque for Garraway Coffee House, the first coffee house to offer tea.

Pssst… Looking for a coffee shop that feels very special, in the heart of The City? Try Host Cafe, in St Mary Aldermary church. And don’t forget to look up. I promise it’s worth it.