General

Welcome! If you are here to leave details of your ancestors for the Huguenots of Spitalfields Map or want to see it’s progress please visit the Town House Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/townhousespitalfields

and like, comment or share so that we can get as many families as possible on the map before we print it. Thank you and please come and see the map if you can, it will be in the gallery at Town House until the end of August.

Until about 1830 Fournier Street in Spitalfields was called Church Street and in a spare moment last year I googled my address as it was then: 30 Church Street. To my surprise a result from a trade directory was first on the list, referring to Richard Ball, weaver, living here in 1794, and a resident of the building previously unknown to me. Unable to find any further information on him, I filed it away as another piece in the jigsaw of who has lived here for the past three centuries.

In an extraordinary coincidence a few months later I picked up a second-hand copy of ‘Life and Death in Spitalfields 1700 to 1850’ written about the excavation of the crypt in Christ Church and published in 1996. One of the vaults examined was the Ball family, specifically Mary and Martha who died in 1819 and 1821, aged 47 and 70 respectively – but no Richard. I assume, however, that these were his wife and daughter. I have since discovered that Richard Ball seems to have been in partnership with Stephen Sorel, forming the firm Sorel and Ball, weavers and silk merchants of Church Street, which was active c1770 – 1790.

So I am very much looking forward to the talk taking place on the 16^th April in Christ Church on these excavations, part of the Huguenots of Spitalfields festival (8^th – 21^st April). Not that I think the Ball family will feature, but I’ll know a bit more about their lives in Spitalfields as I imagine them weaving in the attic here. The photo is one of the plates from Hogarth’s Industry and Idleness, 1746 and shows weavers with their tall looms, the cut-out for which was found during the work that took place here ten years ago and which survives to this day in the attic ceiling.

I have been buying 50’s and 60’s books on design and decoration recently because I find the photos incredibly appealing. The slightly sparse interiors mixing modern art with antiques, the use of strong monobloc colours and a feeling of modern geometric forms all seem to be exactly ‘the look’ that has been around in the interior design magazines since things moved on from white minimalism. This photo is from ‘L’Oeil du Decorateur’ published as part of a series in 1963 and looking through it has made me realise how much of interior design we see around us now is prompted by re-visiting the past for inspiration. This shouldn’t be a surprise I suppose, if you look back at 19th century it’s littered with updates of old ideas: the Egyptian revival, Chippendale revival and Tudorbethan styles are all examples, but I think now we tend to associate the word design with innovation so it’s a surprise to discover how strong an influence the past can still have. Maybe it’s a comfort blanket, something easy and familiar as a respite from the shock of the new. Whatever the reason I love how modern some of these 50’s and 60’s interiors feel.

It was time for a change! Websites with lots of thumbnail photographs of stock are generally only interesting on the first visit, from then on you just tend to look at the new arrivals. The new website also reflects the change in the shop from traditional antique shop to a space reflecting my likes and interests, old and new. So I also want the new website to have more of a sense of the new life of the shop. I only realised that this might be possible when Joanna Moore’s exhibition in the gallery last year featured in Spitalfields Life prompting the visit to the show of many of its readers – all with a genuine interest and affection for everything connected to the blog. Not being a social media user I had never encountered that sense of community on the web and I suddenly understood that websites can have a life and a personality that people enjoy getting to know, in exactly the same way as visitors to small shops like getting to know the owner. So I am going to talk about some of the things I have in the shop and why I like them, people I come across and interesting things I find. We’ll just have to see as we go along…..