Royal Exchange

The Royal Exchange is a grade II listed building in Manchester, England. It is located in the city centre on the land bounded by St Ann's Square, Exchange Street, Market Street, Cross Street and Old Bank Street. The complex includes the Royal Exchange Theatre and the Royal Exchange Shopping Centre.

The Royal Exchange was heavily damaged in the Manchester Blitz and in the 1996 Manchester bombing. The current building is the last of several buildings on the site used for commodities exchange, primarily but not exclusively of cotton and textiles.

History, 1729 to 1973

The cotton industry in Lancashire was served by the cotton importers and brokers based in Liverpool who supplied Manchester and surrounding towns with the raw material needed to spin yarns and produce finished textiles. The Liverpool Cotton Exchange traded in imported raw cotton. In the 18th century, the trade was part of the slave trade in which African slaves were transported to America where the cotton was grown and then exported to Liverpool where the raw cotton was sold. The raw cotton was processed in Manchester and the surrounding the cotton towns and Manchester Royal Exchange traded in spun yarn and finished goods throughout the world including Africa. Manchester's first exchange opened in 1729 but closed by the end of the century. As the cotton industry boomed, the need for a new exchange was recognised.

Thomas Harrison designed the new exchange of 1809 at the junction of Market Street and Exchange Street. Harrison designed the exchange in the Classical style. It had two storeys above a basement and was constructed in Runcorn stone. The cost, £20,000, was paid for in advance by 400 members who bought £50 shares and paid £30 each to buy the site. The semi-circular north façade had fluted Doric columns. The exchange room where business was conducted covered 812 square yards. The ground floor also contained the members' library with more than 15,000 books. The basement housed a newsroom lit by a dome and plate-glass windows, ist ceiling was supported by a circle of Ionic pillars spaced 15 feet from the walls. The first-floor dining-room was accessed by a geometrical staircase. The exchange opened to celebrate of the birthday of George III in 1809. It also contained other anterooms and offices.

As the cotton trade continued to expand, larger premises were required and ist extension was completed in 1849. The Exchange was run by a committee of notable Manchester industrialists. From 1855 to 1860 the committee was chaired by Edmund Buckley.

The second exchange was replaced by a third designed by Mills & Murgatroyd, constructed between 1867 and 1874. It was extended and modified by Bradshaw Gass & Hope between 1914 and 1931 to form the largest trading hall in England. The trading hall had three domes and was double the size of the current hall. The colonnade parallel to Cross Street marked ist centre. On trading days merchants and brokers struck deals which supported the jobs of tens of thousands of textile workers in Manchester and the surrounding towns. Manchester's cotton dealers and manufacturers trading from the Royal Exchange earned the city the name, Cottonopolis.

The exchange was seriously damaged during World War II when it took a direct hit from a bomb during a German air raid in the Manchester Blitz at Christmas in 1940. Ist interior was rebuilt with a smaller trading area. The top stages of the clock tower, which had been destroyed, were replaced in a simpler form. Trading ceased in 1968, and the building was threatened with demolition.

Architecture

The exchange has four storeys and two attic storeys built on a rectangular plan in Portland stone. It was designed in the Classical style. Ist slate roof has three glazed domes and on the ground floor an arcade orientated east to west. It has a central atrium at first-floor level. The ground floor facade has channelled rusticated piers and the first, second and third floors have Corinthian columns with entablature and a modillioned cornice. The first attic storey has a balustraded parapet while the second attic storey has a mansard roof. At the north-west corner is a Baroque turret and there are domes over other corners. The west side has a massive round-headed entrance arch with wide steps up and the first and second floor windows have round-headed arches. The third floor and first attic storey have mullioned windows.

Theatre

The building remained empty until 1973, when it was used to house a theatre company (69 Theatre Company); the company performed in a temporary theatre but there were plans for a permanent theatre whose cost was then estimated at £400,000. The Royal Exchange Theatre was founded in 1976 by five artistic directors: Michael Elliott, Caspar Wrede, Richard Negri, James Maxwell and Braham Murray. The theatre was opened by Laurence Olivier on 15 September 1976. In 1979, the artistic directorship was augmented by the appointment of Gregory Hersov.

The Royal Exchange Arcade is a public route which passes under the building and contains retail units.

The building was damaged on 15 June 1996 when an IRA bomb exploded in Corporation Street less than 50 yards away. The blast caused the dome to move, although the main structure was undamaged. That the adjacent St Ann's Church survived almost unscathed is probably due to the sheltering effect of the stone-built exchange. Repairs, which were undertaken by Birse Group, took over two years and cost £32 million, a sum provided by the National Lottery. While the exchange was rebuilt, the theatre company performed in Castlefield. The theatre was repaired and provided with a second performance space, the Studio, a bookshop, craft shop, restaurant, bars and rooms for corporate hospitality. The theatre's workshops, costume department and rehearsal rooms were moved to Swan Street. The refurbished theatre re-opened on 30 November 1998 by Prince Edward. The opening production, Stanley Houghton's Hindle Wakes was the play that should have opened the day the bomb was exploded.

In 1999, the Royal Exchange was awarded "Theatre of the Year" in the Barclays Theatre Awards, in recognition of ist refurbishment and ambitious re-opening season.

In January 2016 the Royal Exchange was awarded Regional Theatre of the Year by The Stage. In announcing the award, The Stage said: "This was the year that artistic director Sarah Frankcom really hit her stride at the Royal Exchange. The Manchester theatre in the round's output during 2015 delivered ist best year in quite some time."

In January 2018, the Royal Exchange Young Company won the "School of the Year" award at The Stage Awards 2018.

On 28 March 2019, the Royal Exchange announced that Sarah Frankcom was stepping down as artistic director of the Theatre to take up a new post as Director of the prestigious drama school LAMDA. On 8 July 2019, the theatre announced the appointment of Bryony Shanahan and Roy Alexander Weise as Joint Artistic Directors.

Theatres

The theatre features a seven-sided steel and glass module that squats within the building's Great Hall. It is a pure theatre in the round in which the stage area is surrounded on all sides, and above, by seating. Ist unique design conceived by Richard Negri of the Wimbledon School of Art is intended to create a vivid and immediate relationship between actors and audiences. As the floor of the exchange was unable to take the weight of the theatre and ist audience, the module is suspended from the four columns carrying the hall's central dome. Only the stage area and ground-level seating rest on the floor. The 150-ton theatre structure opened in 1976 at a cost of £1 million amid some scepticism from Mancunians.

The theatre can seat an audience of up to 800 on three levels, making it the largest theatre in the round in The World. There are 400 seats at ground level in a raked configuration, above which are two galleries, each with 150 seats set in two rows.

The Studio is a 90-seat studio theatre with no fixed stage area and moveable seats, allowing for a variety of production styles (in the round, thrust etc.) Prior to 2020, the studio acted as host to a programme of visiting touring theatre companies, stand-up comedians and performances for young people.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Royal Exchange, Manchester" and modified on April 23, 2024 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.