It stands at the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street, a plain but gracious rectangular brick property with tall arched windows which let the light flood in. Set high up on the wall is a vertical sundial with a Latin inscription, Umbra Sumus (we are shadows).

Originally intended as a reference not only to the workings of the sundial, but as a reminder that our life on earth is fleeting, the inscription has come to have an added significance for this area, as waves of immigrants have arrived, thrived and then moved on.

The building has had many names as each community established its own place of worship here:

1743 - La Neuve Eglise

The French Huguenot community built this as a Protestant Church in 1743, along with a small school. The Huguenots were refugees (the term entered English at this time from the French word "réfugié"), fleeing religious persecution by the Catholics at home. They had been arriving in ever greater numbers since the 1680s and they brought with them their silk weaving skills, bestowing great prosperity on the area.

Their legacy is to be found not only in the French street names which abound in “Weaver Town”, as it was called, but in the elegant rows of Georgian town houses they also built. It only took two or three generations for the French-speaking community to be assimilated, mainly through inter-marriage, and the congregation dwindled. The Church was sold to a newly-founded society looking for headquarters.

 

1809 - The Jews’ Chapel

The London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews had four aims: to declare the Messiahship of Jesus to Jews primarily but also to non-Jews; to endeavour to teach the Church its Jewish roots; to encourage the physical restoration of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel; and to encourage the Hebrew Christian/Messianic Jewish movement. 

The Society failed to have a dramatic impact on the inhabitants of Brick Lane so they moved elsewhere and the building was taken over by Methodists in 1819.

 

1819 - Methodist Chapel

The Methodists already had a strong connection with this area of London. John Wesley himself had lived not far away on City Road and preached his first covenant sermon at the Black Eagle Street Chapel, just off Brick Lane. The simplicity and plainness of the building would no doubt have suited them well.

 

1897 - Machzike Adass or Spitalfields Great Synagogue

This was an Independent Orthodox, later Federation Synagogue which had schoolrooms on the roof. There had been an influx of Yiddish-speaking Jews to the East End after the assassination of the Tsar of Russia in 1881 which had resulted in pogroms (organised massacres) across northern Europe.

Brick Lane was the heart of the “shtetl” and this was the principal synagogue of the area, open from dawn till dusk. From the 1960s, the Jewish community dwindled, many moving to areas of north London such as Golders Green and Hendon (known as the “bagel belt”). The building closed for a short while before its next incarnation.

 

1976 - London Jamme Masjid

This is one of the largest mosques in the capital and 4,000 worshippers can be accommodated in the prayer hall. On a Friday the shoes of the worshippers (which have to be removed before entering) spill out down the stairs into the street. The mosque serves the needs of the large Bengali community - the area is now called “Banglatown” - which grew up after the second world war. Once again there is a school for religious instruction here, on the first floor.