No. 59 Brick Lane, is perhaps an address that best stands testament to both diversity and adversity. It is a notable landmark that housed consecutive religions and has seen a change in the spirit of the place.
In 1743 a Huguenot Chapel, the Neuve Eglise, was built as a place of worship for the local community was erected at 59 Brick Lane. By then, it was peppered with Protestant Irishmen escaping religious discrimination and poverty. By 1819 the building had passed on to the Wesleyan Methodists who occupied it till 1897. After that, the Machzikei Hadas, an orthodox Jewish group converted it into The Spitalfields Great Synagogue. Finally, when Muslim Bengali immigrants settled in great numbers, the building finally metamorphosed into its current form – The Jamme Masjid; The Great Mosque.
Till date, the mid-Georgian building stands proud; handsome and externally unaltered.
The chapel that became a synagogue that became a mosque. It serves as a great microcosm of the ever-changing nature of Bricklane – London’s most diverse locality.
First known as Whitechapel road, Brick Lane is said to have been renamed so because of its clay-rich soil that met the increased demand for bricks and tiles post the 1666 Great Fire of London that diminished so many of the city’s wooden buildings. Then the opening of a local brewery established the area as a communal market for livestock and produce. It was only with the inflow of French Protestant Huguenots that buildings began to sprout around its sides, housing the weaver community that popularised Brick Lane as a Silk and textile market.
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