Qualla: Spitalfields https://qualla.com/spitalfields en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/spitalfields-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Spitalfields https://qualla.com/spitalfields Spitalfields: Introduction https://qualla.com/spitalfields/ Photo credit Original photographer and uploader was Tim giddings at en.wikipedia, Public domain. In 1197, a priory hospital was founded just outside the City of London's eastern wall — a place for the sick poor, run by a religious order, on land that was still partly farmland. Eight hundred years later, the same few square miles in what is now the London Borough of Tower Hamlets hold the largest Bangladeshi community in Britain, some of London's most expensive Georgian townhouses, a market that receives 25,000 visitors every week, and a blog that has been documenting daily life here since 2009 with a promise of 10,000 essays. The name of the place comes from that medieval hospital: "spital" being a corruption of the word for hospital. Spitalfields has never entirely shed that original character — it remains a place of arrival and accommodation, of survival and reinvention.

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Image: Original photographer and uploader was Tim giddings at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/spitalfields-wp/gcpv-spitalfields-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Spitalfields: The Huguenot Silk Weavers https://qualla.com/spitalfields/ Photo credit Steve Cadman from London, U.K., CC BY-SA 2.0. The character of Spitalfields that shaped its built environment most profoundly came from the Huguenots — French Protestant refugees who fled to England after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, destroying their legal protections. In December 1687, a committee establis...

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Image: Steve Cadman from London, U.K. | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/spitalfields-wp/gcpv-spitalfields-the-huguenot-silk-weavers.mp3 0:06 2 full Spitalfields: Little Jerusalem https://qualla.com/spitalfields/ Photo credit Mike Prior, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the Victorian era, the Huguenot silk industry had collapsed — a trade treaty with France in 1860 opened the market to cheaper French imports, leaving weavers unemployed across Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, and Shoreditch. The large-windowed weavers' houses proved well suited to...

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Image: Mike Prior | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/spitalfields-wp/gcpv-spitalfields-little-jerusalem.mp3 0:06 3 full Spitalfields: Brick Lane and Beyond https://qualla.com/spitalfields/ Photo credit Aqwis, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the late 20th century, the Jewish community diminished and Bangladeshi immigrants arrived, working in the same textile trades and establishing what became known as the curry capital of London — Brick Lane lined with restaurants, its northern stretch hosting the weekly Brick La...

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Image: Aqwis | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/spitalfields-wp/gcpv-spitalfields-brick-lane-and-beyond.mp3 0:06 4 full Spitalfields: What Stays and What Changes https://qualla.com/spitalfields/ Photo credit Doyle of London, CC BY-SA 4.0. A remarkable detail about Fournier Street is that its most prominent building has been, in succession, a Huguenot chapel, a Methodist chapel, a Jewish synagogue, and now a mosque — the same structure serving successive waves of immigrant communities over three centuries. This con...

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Image: Doyle of London | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/spitalfields-wp/gcpv-spitalfields-what-stays-and-what-changes.mp3 0:06 5 full