If you walk south over London Bridge to Borough Market, you will find a building called the Hop Exchange. This Grade II listed building by R.H. Moore opened in 1867, and this part of London, known as Southwark, has been famous for its coaching inns and breweries since Chaucer’s time, when there was only one bridge over the Thames. It was also the center of the hop trade.
Hops, grown in Kent, came up the Old Kent Road to be used in the breweries and were traded by the many hop factors in the area. If you step inside the building, you will see three tiers of balconies over a vast open atrium as shown in the photograph. This “open outcry” design, where merchants on the balconies could shout their orders to the traders on the floor, is similar in concept to the Lloyd’s insurance building.