Rise and fall Heyday of the Stock Exchange

FOR 21 years the old Stock Exchange building on St Nicholas Street has been an Indian restaurant, but according to recent article in the Post it's now closed and the building is available for rent for £30k a year.

- Eugene Byrne, our man who lost his shirt

The building was constructed in the early 20th century to house the Bristol Stock Exchange, though this had been in existence for over 50 years by then.

You might say that the site itself is a reflection of some of the more colourful aspects of Bristol's commercial history. This is thought to have been the spot where John Whitson's house once stood.

Whitson (15587-1629), according to the sort of oft-told legend of the rewards of hard work, came to Bristol from his native Gloucestershire as a poor-but-honest lad and was apprenticed to a wine merchant.

When the latter died he married his former master's widow and went on to become one of the leading citizens of Bristol, a mayor and MP. Much of his considerable fortune went towards the founding of Red Maids school. He’s our very own Dick Whittington.

(If you like you can also put a romantic spin on how he came to marry his first wife. She invited him down into the cellar, according to 17th century gossip-monger John Aubrey, to broach a barrel of wine, but he ended up "broaching his mistress". Whether it was true love, or just lust on the part or one or both parties, or whether it was sort of transactional, or a mixture of all of the above we'll never know.)

Much, much later the Bristol Stock Exchange was founded in circumstances it would be hard to find any romance in.

Some Bristolians had been trading in company shares from the times of the earliest joint stock companies, but the Bristol stock exchange was founded in 1845.

This followed a meeting of local brokers who could see the advantage in working together and pooling resources. John Kerle Haberfield, later Sir John, was the Exchange's first president and treasurer. One of Bristol's leading citizens at the time, he would eventually serve six terms as Mayor.

The foundation was prompted at least in part because in 1845, the whole country was in the grip of what got called "Railway Mania."