The title is more a claim than a fact. The Manchester Royal Exchange is certainly not the biggest room in the world today. It probably never was. But that wasn’t the most extravagant claim it was even referred to as "the eighth wonder of the world" and "the hub of the universe". The claim was made at two moments in the building’s life: first in 1874 when it was about the size it is today, and again in 1921 when it was twice as big one and a half acres of parquet floor.

But no one has ever contested the fact that it was the greatest place of assembly for traders that the world has ever seen.

The usual reason given in local history books for the building of Manchester’s first Exchange in 1729 is that trade had grown to such a pitch in the town by the start of the century that somewhere was needed for "chapmen to meet in and transact their business." But why did Sir Oswald Mosley (who was to become Lord of the Manor in 1734, but already in the 1720s was doing the job for his elderly aunt Lady Anne Bland, the titular Lady of the Manor) spend his own money on building a meeting house? Presumably for profit to stimulate trade, which would increase the number of stallholders and so swell the rent roll.

Yet for that purpose, extending the market place would have been enough. Why a meeting house? A splendidly eccentric doctor called Stukeley, writing of Manchester in 1724, spotted something that Sir Oswald capitalised on. He said of Mancunians: "Like the Athenians, they are much inclined to hear and tell news."
Athenians had the "Agora" and Mancunians had their market place. But Mancunians also had rain, and what Sir Oswald did was build a covered place of assembly where men could gossip.

Dr Stukeley’s Manchester was very busy he called it "The largest, most rich, populous and busy village in England." Sadly, there is probably less of the 18th century town left today than in any equivalent city in the world. There are only three buildings of any note left in the centre that the doctor would have recognised; the shell of the cathedral is much as it was, St Ann’s Church had been built just twelve years before he made his visit, and the third building is the Old Wellington Inn in the Shambles. Nothing else. Market Street was a narrow lane. Corn still grew in St Ann’s Square. Deansgate too was a lane that ended at Quay Street. There were about 15,000 inhabitants, but only about 75 children in the whole town attended school.

What local government there was, the Court Leet, was conducted in a large two-storied building next to the Shambles, called the Booths. The policing of the town was in the hands of a borough reeve and two constables, all of whom were elected. The flying coach to London took 4 ½ days. The post office was in a side room of the main pub, the Bull’s Head Inn, and the postage on a three-page letter to London was about 9d. The roads were truly terrible; inside the town they were narrow and filthy and stank, on the roads out of town the dung gave way to ankle-deep mud in the winter and bone-breaking ruts in the summer.

And yet Manchester was increasingly important. By the beginning of the century Manchester goods were famous in London and even on the Continent. Inevitably the hub of the town was the market place. Manchester’s right to hold a market, granted by the Lord of the Manor in 1301, was important to its emergence as the centre of the district the grant forbade the creation of any other market within a radius of 6 ½ miles.

The market place was also the meeting-place. All the early public buildings were close by, the coffee shops were either in the market place or just set back from it. This was the obvious site for the Exchange, which was built where Marks & Spencer’s is today on the Market Street Corporation Street corner.
According to an early sketch of the building in a 1740 map of the town, it was rather handsome. The ground floor was open, with a large room above. One can easily imagine the advertising blurb: "… on street level an elegant, pillared concourse where the business men of the town may meet to talk and exchange news. Fully protected from the elements. Upstairs a fine public room where the ladies of the town may visit and gentlemen may privately conduct their business."

Of course, it never worked out like that. The lanes leading to the market place were small and filthy. Animals, including pigs and cows, roamed the streets, and one suspects that elegance and spaciousness were not much in evidence on market day.

It seems, indeed, that the Exchange never really worked in the way intended. A visitor to the town said it was a failure "instead of affording a convenient walk for the merchants, it is crowded with butchers’ stalls and blocks up the road." Nevertheless, the Exchange became the first really popular public building in the town. Frequent references to it in the Court Leet records and the Constable’s Accounts show the colourful and varied existence it enjoyed.

Regiments were constantly passing through Manchester, either on their way to a European battleground, or simple as an outward manifestation of a new and nervous Hanoverian monarch. If they spent a night in the town they were often billeted at the Exchange. Visiting soldiers meant revels; revels meant broken windows, and the Constable’s accounts reveal that one man, at least, must have rubbed his hands in glee at the approach of every regiment. There were frequent entries reading "To Luke Ashley, glazier, for repairing of windows at the Exchange, 3s 6d." He made a fortune!

The inheritors of the Exchange, the new Royal Exchange Theatre Company, when they first hatched their exotic scheme to build a theatre in the Victorian vastness of the Great Hall felt apprehension at all the solemn gentlemen turning in their graves at the very idea of theatricals being performed in their cherished solemn home. What the theatre company did not know at the time was that they were, in fact, returning the Exchange to a frequent use of the eighteenth century musical and dramatic performances.
In fact, it was the home of Manchester’s first recorded theatrical performance, in 1743, and a playbill still preserved shows that the entertainment consisted of Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer followed by a pantomime entitled Harlequin’s Vagaries. Pit seats cost 1s 6d and admission to the gallery was 1s, by no means low prices for those days.

It is believed that the famous actor Charles Macklin appeared at the Exchange in 1750, and a reference in the same year to a performance of Macbeth sheds a curious light on the problems facing actors and managers in those days.

Strolling players found it hard to get permission to present plays, but music was entirely respectable. The advertisement in Whitworth’s Manchester Magazine refers to Macbeth "with all the original music, songs and dances." Clearly the public wanted Shakespeare and got Shakespeare, but the performance was permitted only if the equivalent of the "watch committee" could pretend it was an evening of madrigals.
The Exchange was the scene of a Grand Ball in 1760 to celebrate the coronation of George III. A great procession took place through the town, which was specially illuminated to mark the occasion. This must indeed have been spectacular, because there is reference at the time to only two lights in the whole town, one on the Cross in the Market Place and one on the Old Bridge connecting Manchester with Salford. There were over 700 at the ball and a commentator later observed that the room was considerably more crowded than was elegant.

When the streets of Manchester were widened in 1771 an improvement which meant the demolition of the Booths the Exchange became busier than ever. The Court Leet met regularly there and there are frequent references to entertainments, lectures and demonstrations.

Many of the early textile inventions were shown for the first time in the Exchange. One can imagine John Kay, Richard Artwright, Samuel Crompton and the rest making their way up the stairs with models of their inventions, hoping to arouse the interest of some enterprising businessman but anxious to avoid the hostility of the working men.

One announcement gives a glimpse into the sharp practices of those days. A Mr Stevens, advertising in 1773 his lecture on "Heads and Headdresses" at the Exchange, hoped that the ladies and gentlemen would buy tickets in advance, since otherwise they would be severely inconvenienced by delays while their gold was weighed. Apparently the clipping of gold coins was so common that when it was offered in payment if became necessary to check their weight.

In September of the same year there was a gala performance by Breslaw and his Italian Opera Company to raise money for the building of the Infirmary in Piccadilly. It appears almost certain that, until the first theatre was built in Marsden Street in 1762, the Exchange was the only building in the town capable of presenting plays.

But these were special events, usually at night and always on the upper floor of the building. Downstairs, amongst the stalls spilling into the market place, there would be plenty of free, if often brutal, entertainment to be had from the drunk in the stocks, or from the rogue in the pillory.

Behind St Ann’s Churchyard there is still an attractive covered walkway called St Ann’s Passage, linking the Square with King Street. Above it is an inscription which includes the words "The Old Exchange". Apparently there was a large room over the passage which was used for dances and meetings, and, as the Exchange proper became more disreputable, it was used as an alternative place of assembly.

At the other end of the Square, where the Exchange is now, there was a solid row of houses including the old Coffee House. The only connection between St Ann’s Square and the Exchange was a pitch-black alleyway called Dark Entry, which had a right-angled turn in the middle and was a notorious spot for muggings. It is said that before going down the passage you should stop and listen. If you heard footsteps coming towards you, then you waited; if not, you ran through as fast as possible.

With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, Manchester grew with fantastic speed towards the end of the 18th century and the Exchange, from being simply dirty, became sordid. Its demolition in 1792 was described as a great benefit to the neighbourhood.

Nathan Crompton, who was the Borough Reeve of that year, erected on the site of the Exchange a monument with a clock on top. The clock never worked, the purpose of the monument puzzled the townspeople, and it became known as Crompton’s Folly.

As the area continued to decay, the site of the Exchange became "the resort of the ne’er do wells and the won’t-works of the town", and earned itself the name of Penniless Hill. Twelve years after the first Exchange was pulled down, a public meeting was called on 8 October, 1804, in Spencer’s Tavern, to discuss the inadequacies of the fast-growing town, which now had a population of 90,000 compared with 9,000 in 1729.

After discussion, the meeting agreed that "the erection of a handsome building in the Market Place for the purposes of a commercial coffee room and tavern was highly desirable, and would afford great accommodation to the merchants and manufacturers of this town and neighbourhood.

A committee of 21 was formed with members drawn from a wide range of Manchester life. The chairman, George Phillips, had been Borough Reeve the previous year, and the Borough Reeve-elect, William Fox, was made treasurer. There were manufacturers and dealers, a banker, an architect and a solicitor. Rather more surprisingly, the committee also included a silk handkerchief maker who lived on the corner of King Street and Cross Street, a silversmith, and a drysalter who appears to have been the owner of Strangeways.
The committee tried hard to erase all possible connection with the former Exchange. They called the new project The Commercial Building, and not until well after it was opened in 1809 did it become formally known as The Exchange, though to most people it was probably never known as anything else.

The former site was ruled out because of the filth and the tramps, but land belonging to Lord Ducie at the other side of Market Street (within the site of the present building) was thought suitable, and there was no difficulty in persuading him to grant a lease.

The committee quickly did their sums and calculated they needed £20,000. They issued 400 shares at £50 each, and were able to close the list in a few hours.

A competition to design the new building was won by a Chester architect, Thomas Harrison, who persuaded the committee that they would be best served by a copy of Lloyds Coffee House in London. There were some difficulties (mostly about buying out sitting tenants) before the work could be begun, but the corner stone was laid on 21 July 1806.

According to the Manchester Mercury report, behind the inscription was placed a Wedgwood vase containing newly minted coins and medals of Nelson and Pitt. But when a major extension took place 40 years later, although the vase was found still there, all it contained was one halfpenny piece. An investigation cleared the workmen who unearthed the vase and left suspicion lying squarely on the workmen of 1806. Incidentally the plate bearing the inscription can still be seen in the Central Library.

The membership subscription for the new Exchange was fixed at two guineas for a man either living in Manchester or having his business there, one guinea for anyone else. The committee, it appears, had misgivings about whether Manchester merchants, being notoriously tight-fisted, would be willing to pay to do something they were already doing gratis namely, meeting their contacts.

They need not have worried. The building opened on 2 January, 1809, with 1,543 paid-up members, and within five weeks the committee was instructing the architect to prepare plans for an extension. But what did the subscribers get for their two guineas, beyond a sense of their own importance? The building was certainly handsome, two storied, semi-circular at one end. The main rooms on the ground floor were the newsroom and the bar.

The newsroom, which was open from seven in the morning until ten at night, was the facility most used by the subscribers. Several copies of all the London newspapers were available and there were also provincial newspapers Manchester by this time had five weekly papers.

The ground floor included rooms to let, and the first two went to a tailor and a hatter. Later the Post Office moved in at a reduced rent, for this was a most convenient facility as the markets of members moved further and further abroad. (Eventually it was felt that the Post Office had become too identified with the Exchange, and in 1847 the Town Council insisted on its removal to new premises in Brown Street.)
Upstairs was a large dining room which could seat 300 with room for an orchestra if required. The main kitchens were in the basement, but next to the dining room was "a kitchen fitted up for making gravy and dishing up the viands."

The two principal employees were the Porter and the Barman. The image created by the Porter was felt to be so important that his dress was the subject of detailed discussion by the full committee. They decided to fit him out, at their expense, with "a lace-cocked hat, a staff with a silver head, on which shall be engraved the Manchester Arms and the words Manchester Exchange, a dark blue cloak-coat with gold lace at the collar and with twist at the button holes."

The first Barman was sacked and replaced by a manager. Within four years he was given the title of Master of the Exchange, and never served behind the bar again.
While the subscribers of the new Exchange flourished, the majority of Mancunians were suffering hardship and oppression in the industrial revolution. Fortunes were being made while the average weekly wage of an operative was 10 shillings, and the price of a loaf was 1s 2d. Angry workers wrecked machines, burned mills, and in 1812 there was a riot that nearly ended in the destruction of the new Exchange. In April the Prince Regent (later George IV) took on the duties of Head of State from his extremely sick father. There was great excitement about the Ministers he would choose. Reactionary, hard-line men like Castlereagh and Addington were widely expected to be replaced; they were retained.

The bosses were triumphant, and 154 of them petitioned the authorities to convene a public meeting to express support and congratulations to the Prince. With some trepidation the Borough Reeve agreed and a meeting was called for 8 April in the Exchange dining room at 11am.

It was an extremely provocative step and within a few hours a protest, headed "Now or Never", was on the streets in handbills and posters. It called on citizens to assemble at the Exchange and express their "detestation of the conduct of those men who have brought this country to its present distressed state, and are entailing misery on thousands of our industrious mechanics." The Exchange committee, now greatly alarmed, cancelled the meeting on the rather specious grounds that the staircase to the dining room would not be able to stand the weight of all the people.

But it was too late. An angry crowd assembled; the 154 gentlemen did not. The mob invaded the newsroom, broke windows, smashed pictures and furniture, while a splinter group headed for St Ann’s Square to hold a public protest meeting. Only the arrival of the militia saved the Exchange.

In the aftermath of the trouble the founder of the Manchester Guardian, John Edward Taylor, was falsely accused of having written the "Now or Never" message. His denunciation of his accuser was so strong that he was sued for libel. But Taylor won, a victory which established his public reputation, and nine years later the Guardian began under his editorship.

During the quarter of a century after the Peterloo incident in 1819, in Manchester and its surrounding towns, wealth came to an entirely new group of men. Manchester had been able to produce not only the new inventions and the management to exploit them, but it also produced the men and the ideas to develop the society that resulted from this industrial explosion.

The robustness of early Exchange members, who both fought for reform and made their fortunes was remarkable. To see them in their natural habitat, the place to visit was the Exchange. With exports growing at a tremendous rate, it was said that in the Manchester Exchange there was more detailed knowledge of every corner of the earth than in any other room in the world. In 1847 a major extension, which more than doubled the facilities, was started. It was completed in 1849.

In mid-September, 1851, there came official news that the Queen and the Prince Consort would visit Manchester on October 10, giving the city less than a month for preparation. A hasty meeting between the mayor, John Potter (son of the first mayor) and corporation with the Exchange Committee agreed that the Exchange was the only building in the city suitable for the presentation of the Loyal Address to Her Majesty.
Everything went well, and after his ringing presentation of the Loyal Address the mayor went on his knees to be dubbed Sir John at the foot of a specially-constructed throne. His knighthood was not the only honour handed out by a well-pleased Queen. Within a month the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, sent confirmation that it was the Queen’s pleasure that the building should be known henceforth as the Manchester Royal Exchange.
Other changes were coming. In 1859 the Royal Exchange Committee became the proprietors of the Manchester Royal Exchange. New company laws had been introduced in Parliament four years previously, enabling private firms to shed their ultimate legal responsibilities and become public companies with limited liabilities. The character of the Exchange itself was changing too.

As the business became more intense, the furniture was pushed to the side of the room, the bar was moved out, and left in the middle was a big open space where the serious talking could be done standing up.
Then in 1863 the elderly, amiable Master, Francis Wrigley, was forced after 20 years’ service to retire. He was no longer suitable. What the proprietors needed was a tough, efficient administrator and they got him in Mr Edwin Simpson. Little did the members dream what was in store.
Not only could Edwin Simpson have been more unlike his kindly predecessor; he also had a quite different sort of contract of employment. Instead of Wrigley’s annual salary of £500, he asked for and received £250 and a percentage of turnover. Turnover meant membership, and he set about the matter with what must have been alarming vigour.
Simpson quickly realised that many people coming on ‘Change were not members. He rooted out the defaulters, demanded subscriptions, and where he could prove his case he demanded arrears as well. The members were incensed. Simpson continued his battle by persuading the proprietors to display the names of defaulters on a list on the pillars, and if they still held out, to take them to the County Court.
He also decided to introduce a ticket system which further outraged the members. On the first day that tickets were inspected, over £2,000 was taken at the doors in new subscriptions. Membership still stood at two guineas and in the first year of his appointment, Edwin Simpson raised the membership by 1,121. No wonder he wanted a percentage arrangement!
It was clear that the twice-extended Exchange was far too small, especially with all the new members, and in 1865 it was decided to replace the building with a new one.
Faced by an uncooperative local authority and a membership that refused to provide money, the proprietors took on the less daunting obstacle of Westminster. In 1866 they made themselves into a limited company, then applied for and obtained an Act of Parliament that would give them the planning permission and borrowing powers they had been so far denied.

The third Exchange was built in two stages, and the old building was not demolished until the first half was completed in October, 1871. Exactly three years later in October 1874 the whole project was complete. It was monumental: a "room" measuring 206 feet by 96 feet with a massive dome 125 feet above the centre almost exactly ten times the size of the 1806 building. It was by far the largest single commercial room in the world.
The building was not, and never had been, exclusively devoted to cotton. Cotton was, of course, the key, but as well as the original members, the manufacturers and merchants, there were their salesmen, the middlemen (the importers of raw cotton and the yarn agents) and the finishers (the firms who dyed, bleached or printed the manufactured cloth). As technology developed, the engineers and machinery suppliers needed access to the manufacturers and, with the export trade expanding, shippers, bankers and insurance companies jostled with each other for Members’ custom. And as the wealth of the members grew, so even wine merchants and jewellers joined to find new buyers. The Exchange was a business community.

The broadening of the Exchange membership became even more marked after the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in the 1890s and the numbers began to climb again. Lack of space was a perpetual problem, made more irritating to the members by the knowledge that they were the suffers while the directors were reaping handsome dividends from the ever-increasing subscriptions. In 1906 the directors, under pressure, announced a proposal to buy more land, build a £500,000 extension, and meanwhile raise the subscription from three to six guineas to pay for the improvements.
As in 1865, the subscribers were incensed. They formed the Manchester Royal Exchange Subscribers’ Association, which, within two years, enrolled 6,000 of the 9,000 members. Then they put forward their own plans, which were that the directors should sell the Exchange to the council, buy the now-vacant infirmary site in Piccadilly, build a new Exchange, and still keep the subscription at three guineas.
The directors said to the subscribers in effect: "Very well, you do it. We will sell the Exchange to you, and you can put up the new building." But there were no takers, the whole matter drifted on for seven years with much bad feeling and many rows. Eventually the Board had once more to seek an Act of Parliament, and was given the go-ahead on 4 July 1913, by which time membership had topped 10,000.
Announcing in August, 1913, that Parliament had given the go-ahead for the extended Manchester Royal Exchange, the chairman of the board said it would open by the end of 1916 "unless something unforeseen happens." Something did happen, World War I, and it was not until October 1921 that the new building was ready

The Exchange did not have a particularly distinguished war. Membership dropped by about 2,000, but the directors managed to pay a fairly good dividend each year. The end of the war was commemorated by the first visit to the Exchange by an incumbent American President, President Wilson, who was wildly cheered when he appeared on the gallery.
The new building was of course sensational 1.7 acres with six instead of three domes, and around the now doubled hall were 10 floors which included 250 offices, 38 shops, six restaurants and a Post Office.
It was by far the largest place of assembly for traders of any kind in the world, and in 1921 Lancashire’s dominance still seemed total. It was calculated that there were 130 million spindles in the world, and members of the Manchester Royal Exchange controlled 60 million of them.
But trade troubles were increasing, and 1921 was the worst year for cotton since the famine 60 years before. So it was not surprising that the commentators were a little cautious when King George V and Queen Mary came to open the new building on 8 October.
It was a splendid occasion, with a seated audience of over 15,000 assembled on the "Floor", including the Lord Mayors and Mayors of 70 northern cities and boroughs, but His Majesty too sounded notes of caution and concern in his speech, with hopes that trade would pick up.
For a few years the Exchange was busier than ever but by 1926 exports had been halved and the cotton industry’s downward slide was irreversible. The Exchange itself was never in a desperate state in the ‘30s because it did not depend completely on cotton and the subscription continued to rise, but the directors’ search for other uses for the building showed an unmistakable need for more income.

The second week of February 1935 was an upsetting time for older members. On the Tuesday the directors announced that they were letting the Floor for the annual dance of the Manchester and District Farmers’ Association. As if that were not bad enough, on Friday there suddenly appeared on the Floor five glass stands advertising shirts and ties.
Members took strong exception to this, and without actually smashing the glass shook the stands hard enough for all the displayed items to collapse in a heap. As a further protest they lit up their pipes and cigarettes, very much against the rules. The directors took the point and the stands were removed.
Then Hitler intervened. In the first of the three great air raids on Manchester, the Exchange was hit. What exactly happened has never been quite clear, but the bombs struck the building at about 7pm on 22 December 1940, and by dawn the original half of the building was more or less destroyed.

Although it was 13 years before the building became fully operational again, the inconvenience to members was slight. The bombs had cut the building in half so neatly that only the building of a wall was needed to make the remaining half usable. The members returned after an uncomfortable 16 weeks in the Houldsworth Hall on Deansgate.
Work did not start on the rebuilding of the shattered half until 1948, by which time it was quite apparent that the threequarters of an acre of Hall that remained was quite enough for the 4,000 members who were left. The Exchange was the first building in Manchester to be rebuilt with Government money, and there were strong protests about using funds for what one critic described as "nothing more than a glorified gambling den" instead of on housing.
The only reason the Exchange had priority was that it had been decided to put in six storeys of offices where the bombed half had been, and to let two floors to Government departments. Happily the main walls had been left standing, and the office development was completed within the old exterior.
Boots the Chemist returned in 1950 and on 12 November 1953 Princess Margaret reopened the completed building.
The brief textile boom just after the war was over by the late 1950s. On reopening in 1955 the Exchange membership had risen to around 6,000; by 1960 it was 2,062. In December of that year the corporation gave planning permission to remove the great domes, to reduce the size of the Hall to half, and to build two blocks of offices on the remainder. The work never started because a fortnight later, on 20 December, Messrs Jack Cotton and Charles Clore put in a £2,400,000 bid for the Royal Exchange Company Ltd.
Why should anyone want to buy a company that was in such trouble? The answer was the building itself. Ironically, the bombs had saved it; although the Hall was no longer a going concern, all the offices and shops brought in handsome rents. The land value, with prices rising, was reason enough.
There was a brief resistance by the Board, but the £3 offer for every £1 share was one shareholders could not refuse. Most of the Manchester directors of the company resigned and although the new owners assured the members that the Exchange Floor would go on for ever, it was only eight years before it was agreed that enough was enough.
The development of the telephone and telex, the growth of man-made fibres and their much more stable prices compared with the up-and-down world of raw cotton prices, and the fact that a handful of companies contained all the elements of the trade under one huge umbrella, meant that the social side of the Exchange became all that was left.
So on 2 July 1968, the Master announced that with only 660 members left the company could no longer pay its way.
There was no ceremonial ending, and the few remaining members agreed to continue to meet in a room in the rebuilt part of the premises. The company, which had been absorbed within the Cotton/Clore empire, sold its one and only asset the building to the Prudential Assurance Company a fortnight before the Hall closed.
On 31 December 1968 trading ceased, the doors were closed and the Hall was silent.
To its new owners the Exchange was simply a block of shops and offices with a good yield of rents, but as an investment property it had a yawning absurdity the Hall, three-quarters of an acre of pillared Victorian splendour, big enough to hold Manchester Cathedral. But it was to hold a very different building.