19 Princelet Street: The House of Many Faiths
Why is it significant?
Stop in front of number 19 Princelet Street. The paint is flaking, the shutters are tired, and the whole house seems to lean slightly, like an old man who has seen too much.
Key Facts
| Place | 19 Princelet Street: The House of Many Faiths |
|---|---|
| Address | 19 Princelet Street, London E1 6QH, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51980, -0.07250 |
| Part of Walk | Four Waves of Newcomers: Whitechapel, Spitalfields & Brick Lane in London's East End |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in front of number 19 Princelet Street. The paint is flaking, the shutters are tired, and the whole house seems to lean slightly, like an old man who has seen too much. Then raise your eyes to the top floors of the houses along this street, where you can see wide windows under the roofs, built to catch every bit of daylight for the silk looms.
In 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had protected France's Protestants, the Huguenots. Tens of thousands fled to England, and so many settled in Spitalfields that French was heard on these streets for generations. They even gave English a new word, refugee, from the French réfugié. They brought silk weaving with them, and by the 1720s master weavers and silk merchants were building elegant houses like these. At number 2, on the corner just behind you, lived Anna Maria Garthwaite, one of the finest silk designers of eighteenth-century Europe, whose flowered patterns are now treasured by museums.
Number 19 was built in 1719 for a Huguenot family. A century and a half later the weavers had gone, and Jewish immigrants from Poland had arrived. In 1869 they did something astonishing: they built a small synagogue in the back garden, with a women's gallery and a skylight, hidden behind the front door you are looking at. From the street you would never guess it was there.
Upstairs, in the attic, lived a quiet, solitary scholar called David Rodinsky, who looked after the synagogue and filled notebooks with study of languages. In 1969 he vanished from the house. His room was simply shut up, and when it was opened again around 1980 it looked as if he had just stepped out: books, papers, a calendar on the wall... and, the story goes, a pot of porridge on the stove. Much later it emerged that he had died in a hospital outside London. The mystery became a book, Rodinsky's Room, and a small legend of the East End.
Today the house is fragile and only rarely open, a museum of immigration telling the story of everyone who has lived in these streets. Same walls, same staircase, different prayers. Walk west to the end of Princelet Street, turn left onto Commercial Street, and the great white church will tower over you.