Some Corner of an English Field....

by Neil Matthews

After a slight breakdown in communications with the owners of Dennis Sever’s House, we found out that the house was actually closed on Sunday 8 May, the date of our scheduled visit. The joint event for Travel and History SIGs – with some other Mensans from London also in attendance – was therefore redirected a few minutes around the corner to another Spitalfields location.

19 Princelet Street describes itself as a “museum celebrating diversity”. It is the remains of a Huguenot master silk weaver's home, whose shabby frontage conceals a rare surviving synagogue built over its garden. The official website takes up the story:

“Built in 1719 this 'brick messuage' became the home of the Ogier family, who had escaped from persecution in France. They entered the silk weaving trade and prospered mightily. As most Huguenots moved on, the elegant Georgian houses were sub-divided into lodgings and workshops. At 19 Princelet Street the attic windows were altered to let in more light for weavers to work, but later occupants of the house followed other trades and professions, including Mrs Mary Ellen Hawkins who used it as an industrial school, and Isaiah Woodcock who was a carver and gilder.

“The Irish came, and later the Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe. One little group of early arrivals, mostly from Poland, formed the Loyal United Friends Friendly Society to help newcomers, just as the Huguenots had pioneered such self-help groups in the late 17th and 18th centuries. They took a lease on 19 Princelet Street. In the garden where the Ogier children once played, in 1869 the Jews erected a synagogue. Underneath the synagogue, they created a place where people came together, and - much later - prepared to fight together, against intolerance and fascism.”

The building is Grade II listed and is rarely open to the public, due to the urgent need for repairs. We met a number of the unpaid volunteers who work as part of the Spitalfields Centre charity (reg. charity 287279). Their aim is to raise the £3 million apparently needed to enable the building to open as a permanent exhibition. Entry on the rare open days is free, with donations encouraged (this is an understatement).

The overall aim – to celebrate the contribution of many generations of immigrants who have shaped the life of London and the nation – is a noble one. Following a general election in which immigration featured prominently as an issue, this is a topical subject as well. Also, for Travel SIG members, the subject of escape as a motivation for travel is certainly worthy of debate and discussion. However, the implementation and curation leave much to be desired.

Much of the display relied on the efforts of local schoolchildren of 9 or 10 years of age in writing poems or prose, imagining themselves as recent immigrants to the area – whether Huguenot, Jewish, Irish, Somali or Bangladeshi. There was even a small television screen showing a self-devised play by the students about 19th century Irish immigrants, “using only Victorian petticoats and potatoes as props”. It is hard enough for visitors to imagine what life might have been like, without using the diluting filter of pre-teen schoolchildren. In fairness, this approach may work for the parties of schoolchildren who visit 19 Princelet Street. But they do not come alone; they are not the only visitors; and they are not the most likely source of the £3 million needed to restore the building for permanent display. Some imaginative use of contemporary photographs and documents would not incur much expense and would probably stir visitors’ imaginations much more effectively. Given that most immigrants were escaping something (persecution, famine, war), a better display illustrating their origins would not go amiss either.

The explanatory text on the walls was presumably written by adults. Sloppy sentimentality is too often here instead of useful information – how exactly did immigrants “jolt us out of our complacency”? Some of the information which is provided is dubious. London was not created by the Romans; there was a settlement there beforehand, although one could say accurately that much of what we know of modern London is down to the Romans’ efforts. And, no doubt in sheer excitement at the subject matter, the text veers between present and past tense, sometimes in the same paragraph and once even in the same sentence.

As with all museums and exhibitions these days, a degree of interaction is encouraged. Sometimes this leads to neat ideas, such as asking visitors to list on one label the personal items which they would pack if they had to relocate in a hurry. Sometimes it seems gimmicky and preachy. A number of photos of local residents fill several walls on the top floor, and the visitor is invited to choose from a number of comments on different sheets of paper, and append them to the local resident who is most likely to have made each comment. The recent General Election featured the slogan “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” This appears to be a variation on the lines of “We’re thinking that you can’t guess what they’re thinking.” The other interactivity in evidence on the day we visited was a talk from one of the volunteers – not, as we hoped, about the building itself, but about how desperately the charity needs the £3 million, and a discussion of the arcane art of matching funding.

These comments should not be taken to imply that the visit was uninteresting - far from it. There were a number of fascinating points and stories struggling to get out from suffocation under the buzzwords and current political agendas. It reminded me of Not The Nine O’Clock News’s parody “Nice Video – shame about the song.” This was a case of “Unique site – poor exhibition.”

First published in VISA issue 61 (June 2005)