HISTORY
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pasqua Rosée opened the first[1][2] coffeehouse in London in 1652.[3] The coffeehouse was located in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill. However, Rosee opened his very first coffee shop in Oxford, England in 1651.[4] Rosée was probably born into the ethnic Greek community in Ragusa in Sicily in the early seventeenth century.[5] In 1651 a merchant named Daniel Edwards, a member of the Levant Company and a trader in Turkish goods, encountered Rosée at Smyrna in Anatolia,[6] employed him as a manservant[7] and brought him back to Britain. Once there, Rosée set up the establishment, its sign a portrait of Rosée.[8] In 1654, to circumvent resistance from local alehouse traders, he accepted Christoper Bowman as a business partner because he was a freeman of the city of London. Bowman had been the coachman of Alderman Thomas Hodges, Edwards' father-in-law. The Jamaica Wine House now reputedly occupies the same space.[9] Jamaica Wine HouseFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jamaica Wine House, 2007 Jamaica Wine House, known locally as "the Jampot", is located in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in the heart of London's financial district. It was the first coffee house in London and was visited by the English diarist Samuel Pepys in 1660.[1] It is now a Grade II listed public house[2] and is set within a labyrinth of medieval courts and alleys in the City of London. Jamaica Wine House has historic links with the sugar trade and slave plantations of the West Indies and Turkey. There is a plaque on the wall which reads 'Here stood the first London Coffee house at the sign of the Pasqual Rosee's Head 1652.' Pasqua Rosée, the proprietor was the servant of a Levant Company merchant named Daniel Edwards, a trader in Turkish goods, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment. The coffee house, which opened in 1652, is known in some accounts as The Turk's Head.[3][4][5] The building that currently stands on the site is a 19th-century public house. This pub's licence was acquired by Shepherd Neame[6] and the premises were reopened after a restoration that finished in April 2009. There is a wood-panelled bar with three sections on the ground floor, and downstairs an elegant restaurant. |
LOCATION
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St Michael's Alley, Cornhill, London EC3V 9DS. Is now a pub.
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