“Exchange Alley, that lies next eastward, hath two passages out of Cornhill; one into Lombard Street, and another bending east into Birchin Lane. It is a large Place vastly improved, chiefly out of an house of Alderman Backwall’s, a Goldsmith, before the Great Fire, well built, inhabited by tradesmen; especially that passage into Lombard Street against the Exchange, and is a place of a very considerable concourse of Merchants, seafaring men and other traders, occasioned by the great Coffee houses, Jonathan’s and Garraway’s, that stand there. Chiefly now brokers, and such as deal in buying and selling of Stocks, frequent it. The Alley is broad and well paved with free-stones, neatly kept. The Fleece Tavern, seated in Cornhill, hath a passage into this Alley, being a very large house and of great resort.” At No. 41 Thomas Gray the poet was born on December 24, 1716. Change Alley is at present a winding and tortuous thoroughfare. It bears the date 1886 over the western entry, and contains many red and glazed white brick houses. Close by this entry is the Bakers’ Chop House, a curious little old building with projecting windows of dark wood. In the next portion of Change Alley is a well-built red brick building by R. Norman Shaw, with a slab on the north-east corner bearing the inscription: The site of Garraway’s Coffee House, rebuilt 1874; and beneath is a large stone grasshopper. =Gracechurch Street=, called also Grass church, Garscherche, and Gracious Street, was formerly a market for hay, corn, malt, cheese, etc. There was uncertainty about the name, for in 1329 we find it written Grescherche Street, in 1333 Grascherche Street, a form of the name which is afterwards repeated. In 1275 there is a will by one Martin de Garscherche bequeathing property to his sons and daughters; in 1294, 1311, and 1324, we hear of tenements in Garscherche, which seems as if the place was then an open market, not yet settled down to a street; perhaps, however, the dignity of a street was sometimes conferred upon it, for in 1296 there is mention of Leadenhall in Garscherch Street, and in 1342 it is also named as a street.