Agricultural History Review, Volume 73 Part 2 (2025), pp. 232–256

Corn exchanges proliferated in nineteenth-century Britain, with very few opened before or since. Little studied previously, a primary concern here is to define and identify them to produce something close to a comprehensive listing, by date and place. Interpretatively, a means of categorizing them is proposed before exploring contemporary rationales for building corn exchanges in such numbers. Yet though many buildings still survive, by 1900 many exchanges had experienced a significant decline in the corn trade and were being put to other uses. Corn exchanges flourished at a particular conjuncture in Victorian Britain whose conditions were supplanted from the 1860s. (Includes an online-only appendix: List of corn exchanges opened in the nineteenth century, with sources.)