Where all colonial American goods entering London were processed and duties calculated. HM Customs headquarters during the Revolution and centre of the trade enforcement that sparked colonial resistance.
Begin at the Thames, where all colonial goods entering London were processed and duties calculated. HM Customs enforced the trade regulations that sparked colonial resistance — the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties, the Tea Act all flowed through this building. Walk north into the City.
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Directions to next stop
- Head west on Custom House Walkway, Thames Walk
- Turn sharp right
- Turn right onto Billingsgate Walk
- Turn right
- Turn left
- Turn left onto Lower Thames Street
- ... and 6 more steps
Distance: 0.7 km
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Walk: 9 min
The original Lloyd's Coffee House in the Royal Exchange was where marine insurance was arranged for ships trading with and fighting in the American colonies. Wartime risks dramatically affected insurance rates and shipping decisions.
Lloyd's underwriters bore crippling losses as American privateers seized hundreds of British merchant vessels. Step into the web of colonial coffee houses just yards away.
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Directions to next stop
- Head west on Leadenhall Market
- Turn right
- Turn left
- Turn slight left
- Arrive at your destination, on the right
Distance: 0.1 km
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Walk: 1 min
Primary London hub for Carolina colonial traders from the 1670s to the 1830s. Henry Laurens, future Continental Congress president, conducted business here repeatedly during his London visits.
Carolina traders met here to broker rice and indigo deals. News from all the American colonies filtered through these City coffee houses — each one serving a different colonial trade. The New England merchants gathered nearby at their own house on Threadneedle Street.
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Directions to next stop
- Head west
- Turn right onto Bishopsgate, A10
- Keep right onto Bishopsgate, A10
- Arrive at Bishopsgate, A10, on the left
Distance: 0.1 km
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Walk: 1 min
Centre for Virginia and Maryland merchants; ancestor of the Baltic Exchange. Renamed from Virginia to Baltick as American trade declined during the Revolution -- a commercial measure of the war's impact.
Virginia's tobacco funded fortunes and debts on both sides of the Atlantic. Cross the alley to the Jamaica Wine House, where sugar wealth met slave-trade profits.
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Directions to next stop
- Head south on Bishopsgate, A10
- Turn right
- Turn left onto Bishopsgate
- Turn left
- Turn right
- Arrive at your destination, on the right
Distance: 0.1 km
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Walk: 2 min
Hub for West Indies merchants and colonial trade; part of the same mercantile network disrupted by the Revolution. Also the site of London's first coffee house (1652).
From the West Indies trade, walk to East India House — the company whose surplus tea ignited the crisis that became a revolution.
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Directions to next stop
- Head east
- Turn left
- Turn left
- Turn right
- Turn right
- Arrive at your destination, on the right
Distance: 0.2 km
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Walk: 2 min
Headquarters of the East India Company, whose surplus tea — and Parliament's decision to let the Company sell it directly to the colonies — triggered the Boston Tea Party in 1773. The Company's political influence shaped colonial policy.
The East India Company's tea was dumped in Boston harbour. The spy networks that operated through the City — Paul Wentworth, Edward Bancroft — used the Exchange and these coffee houses as cover. Continue to Cornhill.
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Directions to next stop
- Head northeast
- Turn left
- Turn left
- Arrive at your destination, on the right
Distance: 0.1 km
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Walk: 1 min
Site of Batson's Coffee House at 17 Cornhill where the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor met from 1786 to organise aid for destitute Black Loyalists in London -- a direct consequence of the American Revolution. Thousands who accepted British offers of freedom found themselves abandoned after the war. The Committee organised the Sierra Leone settlement (1787). Equiano served as commissary.
At Batson's Coffee House on Cornhill, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor met to organise aid for destitute Black Loyalists — thousands who accepted British promises of freedom during the war, only to be abandoned in London poverty after it ended. Olaudah Equiano served as commissary. After six stops about trade and commerce, here are the people whose lives were upended by the war those trades financed. End at the Bank of England.
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Directions to next stop
- Head west
- Turn right
- Turn right onto Gracechurch Street
- Turn right
- Turn left
- Keep right
- ... and 4 more steps
Distance: 0.4 km
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Walk: 5 min
Financed the British war effort through government debt instruments. The enormous cost of the American war — over £100 million — strained national finances and contributed to political pressure to end the conflict.
The enormous cost of the American war doubled the national debt and transformed British fiscal policy — a revolution in finance to match the one in politics.
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