Our December walk

On the trail of the Huguenots – our December walk in Spitalfields

Following up our November talk on the Huguenots, our December walk was a return to Spitalfields to explore its historic streets. 

We met at Aldgate East, wandered along Brick Lane and turned off for Fournier Street and its handsome houses. As we walked, we chatted about the serial uses of buildings, from church to synagogue to mosque, shop fronts records of communities that have arrived, thrived and moved on. We noted generational changes, young people returned to newly-fashionable neighbourhoods that their ancestors had left. At the Huguenot church, Christ Church Spitalfields, we turned down Wilkes Street and found a plaque to Mark Gertler, an artist whose name some of us knew but no more (find out more here) and in Princelet Street, we shared stories of visits to the recent Christo exhibition and 19 Princelet Street, occasionally open as a museum of immigration and diversity. In Hanbury Street, we paused to look at the tile memorial, then to the former Huguenot hospital and the magnificent Dennis Severs' House. We headed back towards Liverpool Street Station, dipping down Artillery Lane to see Sandy's Row Synagogue, another former Huguenot church, and the ceramic plaques of bakers. Which gave us an appetite: one of us heading off for bagels; another to lunch; me to buy ingredients for an afternoon's baking.

Fancy joining us for a walk? Look out for our 'coming up' blogposts.