Thursday, September 13, 2018

Revisiting Huguenot London

You would be forgiven for walking around Soho Square, London, trying not to trip over a workman eating his lunch on the pavement, and not realising that the building in this picture is a church. You have to look skywards to see the cross.
French Protestant Church Building, Soho Square, London
Although I was deliberately looking for this church on a recent trip to London, I had to examine the doorway sign at close quarters before I knew I was in the right place. 
Entrance Sign, French Protestant Church, Soho Square, London
The entrance to the building is designed attractively and exudes a certain French style, at least to my eyes.
Entrance Doorway, French Protestant Church, Soho Square, London
Those with good eyesight might be able to read the inscription above the black door:
To the glory of God and in grateful memory of
H.M. King Edward V1 who by his Charter of 1550
Granted asylum to the Huguenots from France
This Tympanum was set up in the year of our Lord 1950
French Protestant Church Tympanum, Erected 1950
Travel really does broaden the mind, as I then had to look up the meaning of Tympanum. Wikipedia tells me it is 'the semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance, door or window, which is bounded by a lintel and arch. It often contains sculpture or other imagery or ornaments.'

Soho Square is located at the top end of today's Charing Cross Road, near Oxford Street and east of Dean St, Soho. I imagined the lifestyles of my Pierssené forebears in this part of London 300 years ago. The family had arrived in London from Dieppe by 1687 and appear first in the parish records of the French Church in Threadneedle Street. By the 1700s many family members were recorded in the parish records of St Giles in the Fields and St George's Bloomsbury. This area was very 'French' at that time and well described in British History Online, in a section referring to developments after Aggas drew his map of London in 1560:
In this map all the country to the north of Charing Cross and west of Chancery Lane is still entirely devoted to country life and uses, and the Hospital for Lepers, dedicated to St. Giles, stood in the fields, with nothing between it and the spot where now stands Leicester Square. The line of St. Martin's Lane was, however, occupied by buildings on both sides as far as St. Giles's Church.
Soon after the Restoration [in 1660] increasing prosperity led to a rapid increase of dwellings. The parish of St. Martin had so enlarged its population that "numerous inhabitants were deprived of an opportunity of publicly celebrating the divine offices," and the result of an application to Parliament was that a separate parish was formed, and a new parish church was built, dedicated to St. Anne, mother of the Virgin.
Around this (in what is now known as Dean Street, Soho) buildings clustered, and within fifty years the parish contained 1,337 houses, according to Maitland. He adds the following information about the prosperity of the parish:—"There are of persons that keep coaches seventy three," and there "is a workhouse for the reception of the poor;" and then he goes on:—"The fields in these parts being lately converted into buildings, I have not discovered anything of antiquity in this parish;" many parts so greatly abound with French that it is an "easy matter for a stranger to fancy himself in France."
This is a characteristic of the parish that has not altered. Strype, in 1720, speaks of the "chapels in these parts for the use of the French nation, where our Liturgy turned into French is used, French ministers that are refugees episcopally ordained officiating; several whereof are hereabouts seen walking in the canonical habit of the English clergy. Abundance of French people, many whereof are voluntary exiles for their religion, live in these streets and lanes, following honest trades, and some gentry of the same nation."
It's this aspect of travel which appeals to me - stepping into the footsteps of my various forebears, trying to erase the modern streetscape from my mind and imagine a place as it was back in their day.

Not that my Huguenot (French Protestant) forebears would have worshipped in this building in Soho Square - but tracking down this symbol of the mass French migration to London to escape religious persecution evoked past times for me. It's rather sobering that we continue to see these problems today - there is always a religion that another group does not like and tries to eliminate from its midst. In the case of the Huguenots 350 years ago, their skills contributed to England's gain and France's loss.

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