The East India Companies influence within Britain can be found more in its effect on culture than in the landmarks it left behind.  It changed our language, tastes, values and traditions more than it changed our landscape.  Not only was it the first major shareholder owned company, it changed the course of economic history, and pioneered trade and exchange throughout the known world.  For London it established its commercial stature, name places, historical figures, language, ethnic mix and culinary traditions.  Even so during a walk through London one can quickly see that behind the fabric of the city The East India Company is at the heart of its modern foundations.

The East India Arms, Fenchurch Street

The East India Arms on Fenchurch Street, Stands at the centre of the Company’s former commercial universe. Westwards lies Philpot Street, where it was originally based in its founding governor, Thomas Smy, mansion. Just up where Lime Street meets Leadenhall Street is the site of East India House, the Company’s headquarters for more than two centuries, a plot currently occupied by the steel and glass of the Lloyds of London Insurance building, and heading south is Mincing Lane, once the centre of Britain’s tea trade.

No 5 Philpot Lane

The East India Company operated out of several sites in The City of London, the first in Philpot Lane, then it took a lease on Lord Northampton’s mansion, Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate and lastly in 1658 it leased Lord Craven’s House in Leadenhall Street.

Lloyds Building, the site of East India House from 1658 to 1858

The East India Company’s final headquarters were on the site of the Current Lloyds building. Originally this was the ‘great mansion house’ of Sir William Craven, who had been Lord Mayor of London in 1610.  This structure was rebuilt in 1726 and then replaced in 1799-1800 by a much larger building designed by the architect Richard Jupp. Built in 1799, where Lloyds now sits, there is no memorial to the 200 foot long ‘Monster of Leadenhall’, the HQ of The East India Company.  Classically columned it had sculptures of Britannia on a Lion, Europa on a horse and Asia on a Camel. It was torn down in 1861; 3 years after Queen Victoria’s government had absorbed The Company’s territories and ordered its holdings dispersed.

Church of St Mathias, Popular High Street

St Matthias Old Church is the modern name given to the Poplar Chapel built by The East India Company in 1654, in Poplar, one of the “Tower Hamlets” in the East End of London.

In 1627 The East India Company purchased a house in Poplar High Street to be used as a hospital for disabled seamen.  In 1618 a corrupt jeweler, Hugh Greete, had been sent back from India for stealing some of the best stones. He died in prison in 1619, however he directed that a school or hospital be founded from his estate. The Company had set up a shipyard in Blackwall in 1614, so neighboring Poplar was the obvious choice for location.  In 1633 the inhabitants of Poplar and Blackwall - largely employees of the Company - requested that a chapel be built there as St Dunstan’s, Stepney was too far away for them. When Gilbert De, the Lord of the Manor of Poplar, died in 1639 he left a further £100 towards the building of the chapel which was added to the donation of Hugh Greete, if work started within three years of his death.

The chapel was rebuilt in 1776 and refurbished in 1866. It closed in 1976 but was saved by English Heritage and the Docklands Development Board in 1992 and is now a community centre.

Cutlers Wharf

The East Indiamen were the largest merchantmen in the British merchant fleet.  Because of their size and draught they had traditionally lightened their loads at Long Reach, near Gravesend, before sailing along the Thames to deep moorings at Blackwall.  It was here, rather than in the severely congested Pool of London, that the goods were unloaded. The valuable cargoes were then carried by lighters to the ‘legal quays’ and ‘sufferance wharves’, and from them to the spacious East India Company warehouses, which by the late eighteenth century centred on Billiter Street and Cutler Street (those in Cutler Street were largely built in the 1790s).

Wellington Statue, Bank Of England

Arthur Wellesley, an employee of The East India Company, later known as The Duke of Wellington has a statue situated in front of The Royal Exchange at the meeting point of Cornhill and Threadneedle Street opposite The Bank of England. Cast from the guns Wellington himself captured from the French.  Wellington led campaigns in India against the allies of competing European powers called the Anglo Maratha wars, helping establish The Company as the dominant European trading power in India.  There is no saddle on the horse, and no boots or stirrups on the Duke. This was intentional, as victorious Roman generals rode like this.  It was sculptured by Francis Chantrey and erected in 1844.

British Library, St Pancras

The British library hold the records of The East India Company (1600-1858).  The focus of The India Office Records is the territories which now include India, Pakistan, Burma and Bangladesh and their administration before 1947.  The Records also include source materials for neighboring or connected areas at different times, covering not only South Asia, but also Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.  The official archives of The India Office Records are complemented by over 300 collections and over 3000 smaller deposits of Private Papers relating to the British experience in India.

The India Office Records are administered by The British Library as part of the Public Records of the United Kingdom, and are open for public consultation.

Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road

The V&A holds a vast collection of East India Company artifacts as well as the infamous ‘Tippoo’s Tiger’.  Tipoos Tiger is a life-size beast of carved and painted wood, seen in the act of devouring a prostrate European in the costume of the 1790s.  It has cast a spell over generations of admirers since 1808, when it was first displayed in The East India Company’s museum.  On the dissolution of The Company fifty years later, its properties were transferred to the Crown, and the contents of the museum eventually dispersed to appropriate institutions.  The tiger was among items allotted to the Indian Section of the South Kensington Museum, now called the V&A.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, King Charles Street

The interior was designed by Matthew Digby Wyatt, Surveyor of The East India Company and subsequently Architect to the Council of India.  Wyatt could draw upon the proceeds from the sale of East India House, in Leadenhall Street, and he could thus afford to decorate the interior courtyard of the India Office with marble, tiled friezes and a wealth of elaborate carving.

The staircase has now been restored to Wyatt’s original design, during which it was discovered that the stone statues upholding the chimney-piece bearing the royal crest were estimated to date from the early seventeenth century. It is thought that they came from The East India Company in the City of London.

Clive of India Statue Whitehall

At the age of eighteen, Clive was sent out to Madras (now Chennai) as a “factor” or “writer” in the civil service of The East India Company.  It was often the case that young men joined The East India Company to make their fortune; little did he know how far this journey was to take him.  He entered the military service of The Company in 1744; he soon distinguished himself in the fighting against the French and their local allies.  Clive’s brilliant capture of Arcot (1751) and the relief of the siege of Trichinopoly (1752) thwarted the French commander Dupleix , who had been on the verge of achieving French hegemony in Southern India.

The East India Club, St James Square

Founded in the middle of the 19th century, the club’s original members, as set out in the Rule Book of 1851, were- The East India Company’s servants- Clerical, Civil, Military, Naval and Medical of all the Presidencies, including those retired [and] all commissioned officers of Her Majesty’s Army and Navy who have served in India.  But within the first two decades of the club’s foundation, The East India Company started to loose its Indian possessions and was wound up entirely in 1874.  As a result, the club could no longer look to The East India Company as its main source of members.

Since then, the club has amalgamated with the Sports Club (1938), The Public Schools Club (1972) and The Devonshire (1976), all of which ran into the twin problems of keeping up membership numbers and making ends meet, especially with the escalating costs of maintenance for historic buildings.  With the disappearance of The East India Company, the public school influence has recently become an important one.

No 7 Conduit Street

Today this is the site of The East India Company flagship store, and the address has a significant connection to The Company via Charles Fox.  Charles Fox was born at 7 Conduit Street who after a period of friendship became a political rival to Pitt over the India Bill in 1784.  In 1787, the most dramatic political event of the decade came to pass in the form of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the Governor of Bengal until 1785, on charges of corruption and extortion.  Fifteen of the eighteen Managers appointed to the trial were Foxites, one of them being Fox himself.  Pitt was in an uncomfortable political position. The premier was forced to equivocate over the Hastings trial, because to oppose Hastings would been to endanger the support of the King and The East India Company in his position of Prime Minister, Hasting and the others were eventually acquitted in 1795.