How the East India Company shaped London

Two hundred years ago the massive warehouses and imposing façade of East India House were a constant reminder to onlookers of the power and influence of the East India Company in London. Most of the physical evidence of the East India Company's presence in London has disappeared, so few Londoners today are aware of the Company’s importance in their city's history. Yet a large body of written evidence does survive in the India Office Records held at the British Library. Through these documents we can begin to understand just how influential the Company was in shaping London.

East India House by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1817) - British Library KTOP 24.10.c 
© British Library. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

The minute books of the Court of Directors record which buildings were leased and purchased by the Company from its earliest days to 1858. At first the Company operated from a few rooms in the Philpot Lane mansion of its first Governor, Sir Thomas Smythe. The house was large enough to accommodate a French envoy with a retinue of 120 people in 1619, so Smythe was probably not greatly inconvenienced by the presence of the Company's directors plus a secretary and beadle.

Between 1621 and 1648, the Company was based first at Crosby House in Bishopsgate Street, and then in the Lime Street house of its Governor Sir Christopher Clitherow. In 1648 the Company moved next door to Craven House in Leadenhall Street. This site was to be the Company’s London home for the next 200 years.

East India House 1711 from a drawing by George Vertue - William Foster, East India House (1924) 
© British Library. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

The directors paved the way for future expansion by acquiring a number of neighbouring properties in Lime Street and Leadenhall Street which they earmarked for demolition. The new East India House designed by Theodore Jacobsen was finished in 1729.

East India House 1766 from an engraving by T Simpson for Entick’s History of London - William Foster, East India House (1924) © British Library. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

The final reconstruction of East India House took place in the late 1790s with a building designed by Richard Jupp erected on an extended site. East India House had changed from the earlier layout of Craven House, with a narrow frontage on Leadenhall Street with buildings stretching out behind, to a wide impressive frontage in keeping with the Company's importance and power at the end of the 18th century.

Drawing of East India House by J R Thompson for the Beauties of England and Wales (1801-1816) 
© British Library. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Architects such as Richard Jupp, Henry Holland and Samuel Cockerell were also commissioned to design elegant but substantial warehouses constructed from good quality materials befitting the status of the Company and reflecting the high value of the goods to be stored there.

Fenchurch Street warehouse built in the 1730s - British Library IOR/H/763 
© British Library. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

By 1800 the Company occupied major warehouses to the north of the Thames in New Street, Crutched Friars, Haydon Square, Fenchurch Street, Jewry Street, French Ordinary Court, Billiter Lane, Seething Lane, Leadenhall Street, Coopers Row, St Helen’s, Ratcliff, and Botolph Wharf. They stored the wide range of goods brought from Asia: tea, coffee, spices, drugs, Indian hemp and flax, sugar, indigo, saltpetre, muslins, calicoes, silks, shawls, Chinese textiles, as well as woollens, metals, and military stores for export.

Often it took years to accumulate all the properties needing to be cleared to form the site of one of the proposed warehouses. The Company’s development in New Street and Cutler Street swept away streets of poor housing and caused a steep decline in the population of the parish of St Botolph Aldgate, contributing to the trend whereby offices and warehouses came to dominate the City of London rather than homes.

The wonderful new digital resource allows researchers to discover the history of the East India Company buildings. It also sheds light on the lives of the men (and a few women) who worked in them.

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East India Company, Module 1: Trade, Governance and Empire, 1600-1947 is available now and forms part of a unique three-module resource on the rich history of the English East India Company. For more information, including free trials and price enquiries, please email info@amdigital.co.uk

Watch our short video for a behind-the-scenes look at the collection with Professor Huw Bowen and Head of India Office Records at the British Library, Penny Brook.