The Huguenots of London: How French Protestant Refugees Shaped the East End and Your Family Tree

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In October 1685, Louis XIV signed a document that changed London for ever.

The Edict of Fontainebleau stripped French Protestants of every legal protection they had held for nearly ninety years. At a stroke, Huguenots — French Calvinist Protestants — lost the right to worship, to practise most trades, and to educate their children in their faith. Soldiers occupied their churches. Parents faced prison for attending services.

Within months, some 50,000 men, women, and children fled France for England. The English coined a new word to describe them — refugee, taken directly from the French réfugié. And the city that absorbed the greatest numbers was London.

What followed was one of the most remarkable episodes in British history: a story of loss, resilience, and extraordinary cultural transformation. If your family tree includes names like Dupont, Beaumont, Renard, Aubin, or even seemingly English surnames like Bowyer, Chandler, or Silk, you may carry Huguenot ancestry.

Who Were the Huguenots?

Huguenots were French Calvinist Protestants whose faith traced back to the reforms of John Calvin in the 1540s. For much of the sixteenth century, they fought a series of brutal religious wars against Catholic France. The Edict of Nantes in 1598 brought an uneasy peace, granting them limited rights to worship and to hold certain offices.

But Louis XIV spent his reign dismantling Huguenot rights piece by piece. He closed their churches, banned their assemblies, and pressured their communities with a policy of enforced conversion known as the dragonnades — billeting Catholic soldiers on Protestant households with orders to make life unbearable. By the time he revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Huguenots had already lost most practical freedoms. The revocation removed the last legal protections.

Historians estimate that between 150,000 and 200,000 Huguenots left France during this period. England received perhaps 50,000. Ireland, the Dutch Republic, Prussia, and the Cape Colony in South Africa each took tens of thousands more.

The Great Exodus of 1685

Leaving France was dangerous. Louis XIV banned emigration and stationed troops along the borders and coastlines. Huguenots whom soldiers caught trying to flee faced the galleys. Many refugees travelled in disguise, hiding their religious identity as merchants, traders, or servants.

Those who reached England arrived with little. Some brought skills — in silk weaving, clockmaking, goldsmithing, paper-making, and lace-making. A few brought savings. Many brought only their faith and their families.

England proved more welcoming than most receiving countries. Charles II had invited Huguenot refugees as early as 1681. Parliament passed several naturalisation acts to help them settle. The Church of England offered buildings for French-language services. Over sixty Huguenot congregations eventually established themselves across England, from Canterbury to Plymouth.

Why They Chose London

London attracted the largest single concentration of Huguenot refugees for clear practical reasons. It was a port — accessible from the French coast and from the Dutch Republic, through which many routed their escape. It was a commercial city that needed skilled craftsmen. And it had an existing Protestant community ready to receive them.

The refugees settled mainly in three London areas: Spitalfields, just east of the City; Soho and its surroundings in the West End; and Greenwich to the south. Each neighbourhood carries Huguenot traces to this day.

Spitalfields — London’s Huguenot Heartland

Spitalfields became the centre of London’s Huguenot community. Refugees crowded into the streets east of Bishopsgate, renting rooms and garrets in existing terraces, then building their own houses as their numbers grew.

By the 1720s, the wealthiest Huguenot silk merchants had constructed some of the finest Georgian townhouses in London along Fournier Street, Elder Street, and Princelet Street. These houses still stand. Their proportions are generous, their brickwork precise, their interiors once lined with silk wall-hangings produced in the weaving workshops directly above.

One of the most striking buildings in Spitalfields is the former Huguenot chapel on Fournier Street, which the congregation built in 1743. Over three centuries, that single building’s congregation changed with each new wave of migration through the East End. By the 1890s, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe used it as a synagogue. Today the Jamme Masjid mosque occupies it. The building stands as a compressed history of East London’s migration story.

At 18 Folgate Street, the Dennis Severs’ House recreates the interior of a Huguenot silk weaver’s home across six imagined generations. Severs — an American who bought the house in 1979 — furnished each room as if the family had just stepped out. Visiting this house gives you the most vivid sense in London of how ordinary Huguenot families actually lived in the eighteenth century.

The Silk Weavers Who Transformed British Fashion

The skill that defined the Spitalfields Huguenots was silk weaving. France produced the finest silk in Europe, centred on Lyon. The weavers who came to London brought Lyonnaise techniques and built a new industry in their adopted city.

Within a generation, Spitalfields silk earned an international reputation. Weavers supplied fabric for court dress, for the furnishings of Buckingham House, and for the waistcoats that Georgian gentlemen wore across Britain and the American colonies. The distinctive style — richly coloured, botanically inspired, with brocaded flowers and exotic birds — now fills museum collections from the Victoria and Albert to the Smithsonian.

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The trade brought prosperity to some and misery to others. Master weavers lived in the Fournier Street townhouses. Journeymen worked fourteen-hour days in attic workshops for wages that swung violently with fashion. Boom-bust cycles caused genuine hardship in Spitalfields through the eighteenth century. Riots over wages and cheap Irish imports mark the neighbourhood’s history.

But the industry also created a civic culture. Huguenot merchants funded almshouses, schools, and the Fournier Street chapel. They established the French Hospital — the Hôpital et Dispensaire français — in 1718 to care for poor refugees. The hospital still exists today, now based in Rochester, Kent, and its records form a rich genealogical resource for anyone tracing Huguenot ancestry.

Famous Descendants — Including Paul Revere’s Father

You may carry Huguenot ancestry without knowing it. Estimates suggest that between 1.5 and 2 million Americans have at least one Huguenot ancestor. The surnames refugees anglicised on arrival make the trail harder to follow than it might seem.

Paul Revere — the patriot silversmith famous for his midnight ride — had a Huguenot father. Apollos Rivoire arrived in Boston from Riocaud in south-west France as a teenager, apprenticed to a goldsmith, and anglicised his name. The craftsmanship Apollos brought from France traced directly to the metalworking traditions of the Huguenot diaspora.

David Garrick, the actor who transformed eighteenth-century British theatre, descended from a Huguenot family who anglicised the name Garric. Sir Samuel Romilly, the legal reformer who fought to abolish capital punishment for minor crimes, came from a Huguenot family in Montpellier. Lawrence Sterne, who wrote Tristram Shandy, had a Huguenot grandmother.

Other Huguenot surnames — De la Rue, Bosanquet, Pilleau, Lefroy, Desaguliers — turn up throughout British history. Many families changed their names deliberately on arrival, trading French forms for English equivalents. Descamps became Field. Lefebvre became Smith. The surname Beaumont appears in American records from Virginia to Massachusetts.

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestry

If you think you may have Huguenot ancestry, start at the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland. The Society holds one of the most comprehensive collections of French Protestant church registers in the world — records of baptisms, marriages, and burials from more than sixty congregations that operated in England after 1685.

The National Archives at Kew holds the original returns of strangers (non-naturalised foreign residents) from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, along with denisation and naturalisation records. Denisation — a lesser form of citizenship — gave many Huguenots legal standing, and the records name individuals, their trades, and sometimes their places of origin in France.

The French Protestant Church of London on Soho Square maintains its own archive and library, open to researchers by appointment. For American researchers, the Huguenot Society of America — the oldest Huguenot organisation in the United States, founded in 1883 — holds records specifically focused on the American branches of Huguenot families.

When you search genealogy databases, use French Protestant, Walloon, alien, stranger, and denizen alongside any French-origin surname. Many Huguenots passed through the Low Countries before reaching England, which explains Dutch and Flemish influences in some family trees.

A Huguenot Heritage Walk in London

You can walk the Huguenot quarter of Spitalfields in a single afternoon. Start at Liverpool Street station and head east along Bishopsgate and Folgate Street.

• Dennis Severs’ House, 18 Folgate Street — A preserved Huguenot weaver’s home, available on selected evenings. Book in advance.
• Elder Street — A complete early eighteenth-century street, largely unchanged since the 1720s. These were Huguenot merchant residences.
• Fournier Street — The former Huguenot chapel stands at the corner with Brick Lane. Walk the full length for some of the finest early Georgian architecture in London.
• Christ Church Spitalfields — Nicholas Hawksmoor’s great church of 1729 stands across from the former chapel. Huguenots worshipped here and in the surrounding streets.
• 19 Princelet Street — The Museum of Immigration and Diversity occupies a former Huguenot silk merchant’s house with an 1869 synagogue in the garden. It opens on selected days; check dates before visiting.

The walk covers barely half a mile and takes around two hours at a relaxed pace. You’ll pass French surname plaques, Georgian brickwork, and three centuries of London’s migration history compressed into a few quiet streets.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were the Huguenots and why did they come to London?

Huguenots were French Calvinist Protestants. Louis XIV revoked their legal protections with the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Around 50,000 fled to England. London received the largest concentration, drawn by its port access, its Protestant community, and its demand for skilled craftsmen.

How do I know if I have Huguenot ancestry?

Common Huguenot surnames include Beaumont, Dupont, Renard, De la Rue, Bosanquet, Lefroy, and Desaguliers. Many families anglicised French names on arrival. The Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland holds church registers and membership records that can help you confirm and trace Huguenot descent. Between 1.5 and 2 million Americans have at least one Huguenot ancestor.

Where can I see Huguenot heritage in London today?

The Spitalfields area — specifically Fournier Street, Elder Street, and Princelet Street — contains the best-preserved eighteenth-century Huguenot architecture. The Dennis Severs’ House on Folgate Street recreates a silk weaver’s home across six generations. The French Protestant Church on Soho Square holds an archive open to researchers by appointment.

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