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31 Fournier st

Famous 18th century house in Spitalfields

Such is the interest or demand perhaps to gain access to the now famous 18th century houses of east London’s Spitalfields area that some incredulous residents find themselves on tour company itineraries. One cannot imagine what past residents would make of this phenomenon given that the area had had a relatively brief heyday in the 1700’s when Huguenot silk weavers, fleeing religious persecution in France, moved in but once their business began to shrink they were replaced by waves of poor Irish immigrants, Jewish families from the pogroms of Russia and from the mid- 20th century there followed Bengali communities looking for a new start in a new world. Churches became synagogues and synagogues became mosques.