Brick Lane stands as one of London's most remarkable streets, where successive waves of migration have layered communities, cultures and religions upon one another for over three centuries. The street's physical fabric tells this story most vividly through a single building: the structure at 59 Brick Lane that has served as a Huguenot chapel, Methodist church, Jewish synagogue and now serves as the London Jamme Masjid mosque.
The Huguenots: Silk and Exile
French Protestant refugees began arriving in significant numbers after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which stripped Huguenots of their legal protections. By December 1687, official records documented 13,050 French refugees settled in London, primarily in Spitalfields and surrounding areas including Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Whitechapel and what would become Mile End New Town.
The Huguenots brought sophisticated silk weaving skills that transformed the local economy. Master weavers occupied well-appointed terraced houses with large windows designed to maximise natural light for delicate work. Anna Maria Garthwaite, a prominent silk designer, worked from 2 Princelet Street; her blue plaque remains visible today. The Spitalfields Mathematical Society, founded in 1717 by Joseph Middleton, included weavers among its artisan membership.
Christ Church Spitalfields, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor and built between 1714 and 1729, was constructed partly to assert Anglican authority over the Huguenot dissenters who had established their own chapels. In 1743, Huguenots built La Neuve Eglise on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street, which would later serve three other faith communities.
The Irish: Weavers and Unrest
From the 1730s, Irish weavers migrated to Spitalfields as the Irish linen industry declined. They found employment in the silk trade alongside Huguenot workers. Tensions between communities occasionally flared: the Spitalfield riots of 1769, protests against depressed market conditions and price controls, ended with an Irish weaver and a Huguenot weaver hanged together in front of the Salmon and Ball public house at Bethnal Green.
The Jewish Community: 'Little Jerusalem'
From the 1880s through the early twentieth century, pogroms and the May Laws in Russia drove approximately 140,000 East European Jewish emigrants to Britain. Inner Spitalfields became known as "Little Jerusalem," with Brick Lane at its heart.
The Brick Lane building that Huguenots had raised in 1743 became the Machzike Hadath, also known as the Spitalfields Great Synagogue, in 1891. Abraham Isaac Kook, who would later become the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine, served as its spiritual leader in 1916.
Jewish immigrants adapted the large-windowed Huguenot houses for tailoring work, continuing the area's textile tradition. Petticoat Lane Market received official dispensation for Sunday trading to accommodate Jewish observance of the Sabbath. Notable figures born in the area included Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labour, and painter Mark Gertler.
The Bangladeshis: Banglatown
Bengali presence in the area predates Bangladesh's independence, with records of Sylheti sailors and early settlers from the nineteenth century. Significant migration accelerated from the 1950s and 1960s, with changes to immigration laws in the 1970s encouraging further arrivals.
The 1978 murder of Altab Ali, a 24-year-old leather worker killed in a racist attack near Adler Street, galvanised the community. On 14 May 1978, between 7,000 and 10,000 people, mostly Bangladeshis, marched behind his coffin to Hyde Park in protest against racial violence. Altab Ali Park now occupies the site of his death.
In 1976, the Bangladeshi community purchased and refurbished the Brick Lane building as the London Jamme Masjid, with capacity for 3,200 worshippers including 200 women. The area was officially branded Banglatown in 1997, and the Spitalfields and Banglatown ward was established in 2002.
According to the 2021 Census, the Spitalfields and Banglatown ward population of 14,166 is 51.8 per cent Asian/Asian British/Bangladeshi. Across Tower Hamlets as a whole, 34.59 per cent of residents identify as Bangladeshi. The area's famous curry restaurants, including Aladin, Sheba and City Spice, draw visitors from across London and beyond.
A Palimpsest of Faith and Culture
The sundial atop the Brick Lane Mosque, dated 1743, bears the inscription "Umbra Sumus" — "We are shadows." This Latin motto, placed by Huguenot founders, now looks down upon a street where Muslim worshippers enter the same doors that once welcomed Huguenot Protestants, Methodist converts and Jewish congregants.
Each community adapted the skills and infrastructure of its predecessors: silk weaving became tailoring, which became the textile trade, which evolved into the curry house economy that dominates today. The street remains a living document of Tower Hamlets' history as a place of refuge, labour and transformation.