Bank

The Jamaica Wine House is now a bar and is open Monday to Friday 11am to 11pm.

020 7929 6972

The George & Vulture is a restaurant, serving traditional dishes (average cost per head £30) and is open 12am to 2.30pm Monday to Friday.

0871 3327609

Between Cornhill and Lombard Street you will find a fascinating maze of narrow passages and alleys, created to allow messengers to easily pass between the many businesses that were based here. During the 17th and 18th centuries, they were also home to many coffee houses and taverns where merchants would meet to exchange news and ideas. Many of London’s famous financial organisations were created as a result of conversations held in the coffee houses of these alleyways.

The first London coffee shop was opened in 1652 by Pasqua Rosee in St Michael’s Alley and was frequented by traders in sugar and rum. Pasqua Rosee’s burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, but it was replaced in 1862 by the Jamaica Wine House, named after the former traders.

Further along the alley is the George and Vulture. There has been several taverns on this site. The George was destroyed in the Great Fire and replaced by a wine merchant who tethered a vulture outside. The landlord agreed to change the name of the tavern to the George and Vulture providing the creature was taken away!  The tavern was the meeting place of the notorious Hellfire Club, an exclusive English club established by Sir Francis Dashwood in 1746.

The Jerusalem Coffee House was a popular meeting place for those with an interest in shipping, including employees from the local East India Company. Garraway’s Coffee House opened in 1669 by Thomas Garraway, who was the first to import tea to Britain.  Jonathan's Coffee House is famous as the original site of the London Stock Exchange. The Coffee-House was founded by Jonathan Miles in Exchange Alley, around 1680. In 1698, it was used by John Castaing to post the prices of stocks and commodities, the first evidence of systematic exchange of securities in London. That year, other dealers expelled from the Royal Exchange for rowdiness migrated to Jonathan's, along with Garraway's Coffee House. It was the scene of a number of critical events in the history of share trading, including the South Sea Bubble and the panic of 1745. In 1761 a club of 150 brokers was formed to trade stocks and they built their own building in Sweeting's Alley, which was dubbed the New Jonathan's, but was renamed The Stock Exchange.

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