The Unveiling of the Huguenot Map

The unveiling was the subject of an introduction by the map maker himself, Adam Dant in his book: "Maps of London and beyond"

"Huguenot Spitalfields

During the late 17th and early 18th Century, Spitalfields would have been one of the only places in London where French could be heard spoken in the street.

In 1681, King Charles II permitted the immigration of Huguenot Protestants from France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which was made by Louis XIV in 1685 to protect their freedom of worship.

Huguenot families brought many specialist skills including silk weaving, and today their former homes are often marked by a wooden silk spool hanging outside on streets whose names are distinctly  French origin.
- such as Fournier and Fleur de Lis Streets.

As part of the Huguenots of Spitalfields Festival, descendants of these original residents were invited to pin the names of their ancestors to a huge plan of the neighbourhood.

The process allowed for the rekindling of long-lost relations, settling of old scores, revelation of buried secrets and, somehow, for the identification of a certain lost Huguenot-ness in character, behaviour and general mores.

The map of Huguenot Spitalfields includes three superimposed street plans - lost, surviving and new - and shows the names, professions and locations of 350 early Huguenot residents.

Remarkably, the ancestors of the very first Huguenot immigrants, the Bourdains, Jourdains, Ogiers, et al include the Walters and the Vanners, who continue their trade today in the silk weaving enclave of Sudbury in Suffolk.

On Wednesday 17 June 2015, the map was unveiled at the Town House, an evocative 18th-Century weaver's house on Fournier Street, by Stanley Rondeau and Clifford Atkins who, through the map, discovered that their ancestors had been neighbours.

By returning the names of long-forgotten streets, families and businesses in person to their former homes, these descendants created a 1:1 facsimile map of the Huguenot world.
- until guests slipped off into the cobbled streets of Spitalfields and back to the 21st century.

Before the map was printed, residents were given the opportunity to check the facts and make amendments, hence the anomalies."

An extraordinary effort.

Colin Bower
31 August 2023

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