In the 1700s, Hackney welcomed a new population of French refugees seeking shelter from religious persecution. Although more famously associated with nearby Spitalfields, many settled and prospered in the rural villages that now make up the borough of Hackney.
Who were the Huguenots?
Between 1660 and 1714, around 40,000 ‘Huguenots’ – French Christians who had embraced the Protestant Reformation – fled to England from France following years of religious violence and upheaval. This community gave us the word ‘refugee’, from the French réfugier meaning ‘to seek shelter, protect’.
Roughly half of this new population settled in what we now consider to be London, particularly Spitalfields in present-day Tower Hamlets. The Huguenots, with their reputation for being excellent silk weavers, helped transform Spitalfields from a market in open fields to a thriving centre for silk weaving.
However, Huguenot communities extended beyond this into the nearby villages of what is today’s London borough of Hackney. In historic buildings, graveyards and museum collections we can find traces of these individuals who came to Hackney as a safe haven.
Fleeing France
In 1685, King Louis XIV of France (1638-1715) revoked the Edict of Nantes, a 1598 law that had granted the French Protestant population a degree of religious freedom and equality in the majority Catholic country. Louis XIV ordered the closure and destruction of Protestant schools and churches. French Protestants were also intimidated into converting to Catholicism. To escape this, many left France to seek asylum in countries such as Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland, the Dutch republic (present-day Netherlands) and England.
“This vault was first made for Francis Creuze, Esq in 1743. He was a French Protestant and escaped from France only with his life in the reign of Queen Anne. By the blessing of Providence, with industry and integrity, he acquired an ample fortune and for many years resided at Clapton in this parish where he died 24 January 1758, aged 64.”
Tomb inscription at St John-at-Hackney churchyard.
Huguenots in Hackney
In the 1700s, what is now the London Borough of Hackney was a set of fashionable rural villages. It attracted wealthy merchants, who settled there because of its open green spaces and proximity to the City of London. These villages were ideal neighbourhoods for enterprising individuals to network and prosper.
Huguenot arriving during this period often first took up residence in Spitalfields before moving north to places such as Clapton as they achieved some degree of social and economic mobility. Many did this after establishing successful livelihoods in trades such as silk weaving, silversmithing, wig and hat-making.
Pierre Abraham Ogier (1690-c.1746) arrived in London as a child refugee in 1697. By 1740, he had amassed enough wealth and stability as a silk weaver and merchant to live with his family in a merchant house at 19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields.
Pierre’s daughter, Louisa Courtauld (1729-1807), continued to build on her father’s economic success, running a prosperous silverware business with her husband Samuel Courtauld. By the end of her life, she seems to have permanently moved to a cottage in Clapton. Her will describes her as a ‘Widow of Saint John Hackney, Middlesex’. The Courtaulds were to become a prominent family in the textile trade and their legacy lives on in the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
Many of the Huguenot diaspora were buried in the St John-at-Hackney graveyard, including Anne Cazalet (1674-1759) and her weaver son Stephen (1691-1742). Anne moved to England at some point before 1721 with her husband and three of her grown children. Though she had lived in England for several decades before her death, she made her will in French, demonstrating that she was still able to use her native language in the tight-knit Huguenot community in Hackney.
Links endured between Spitalfields and Hackney even though families and individuals moved northwards from one to the other. On 14 May 1726, Anne Cazalet’s daughter, also named Anne, married a French Huguenot man, Guillaume Paul, at L’Église de l’Artillerie in Spitalfields. Churches like L’Église de l’Artillerie were central hubs of Huguenot life in the 1700s, which the community used for important events such as baptisms and weddings.
Life in England
Attitudes towards the Huguenots in England differed. To some, the new arrivals were a positive addition, as depicted by the artist William Hogarth in Noon (1738). In this engraving, the Huguenots are sober, well-dressed churchgoers, contrasted against the rowdy London poor. Yet as skilled tradespeople, the Huguenots could also be blamed for declining English fortunes. A 1685 petition made by English textile artists complained that they had ‘very little work’ due to the presence of the new French artisans in the city and their families were ‘ready to starve’.
Despite the impression such a petition gives, not all Huguenots in the 1700s were wealthy. The community found ways to look after those who were poor and in need. Under King William III (1650-1702) and Queen Mary II (1662-1694), a committee of Huguenots was assembled to distribute royal funds to impoverished refugees. This committee founded the French Hospital (La Providence) in Finsbury in 1716.
When the original building fell into disrepair, the Hospital’s directors purchased several acres of land in South Hackney in 1862 to establish a new hospital building. The French Hospital moved to Rochester, Kent, in 1959, from where it still operates. The hospital building in Hackney was repurposed as the Cardinal Pole School then Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy. It is now used as the Academy’s library and to provide teaching spaces and additional facilities.
Research for this blog was carried out to inform the new permanent exhibition at Hackney Museum, primarily supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Hackney Council.