Hop Exchange

The Hop Exchange was built in eighteen sixty-seven to serve as the grand, central marketplace for London's massive brewing industry. Its architect, Richard Herbert Moore, designed the structure with a towering atrium and a glass roof, allowing merchants to inspect the quality of hops under natural light. Look closely at the building's facade and you will see decorative wrought iron shaped into hop vines, while the entrance pediment features stone carvings of hop pickers at work. Inside, the galleries are decorated with red shields bearing a white horse, the historic coat of arms of Kent, which was the primary source of the hops that fueled the local trade. Despite its impressive design, the building struggled to find its footing because established hop merchants preferred their own private warehouses. A fire in nineteen twenty destroyed the top two floors and the original gallery roof, permanently altering the silhouette of what was once a far taller structure. Today, it stands as the last surviving example of the many specialized commodity exchanges that once defined Victorian London's commercial life.