Huguenots community in Greenwich for a long time - after all Huguenots had a reputation for hard work and innovation. Just the sort of thing we just needed in Greenwich and I wanted to find out what they contributed to that. A new book out this month is telling me about them.
Perhaps I had better start by saying something about Huguenots and who they were. It may be the case that those of you who are not historians will know nothing about them. They were basically refugees from France – apparently even the word ‘refugee’ comes from these French people who escaped a hostile regime and came here.
Calvinist Protestants in France were persecuted by the Catholic monarchy in the 16th century and later and they fled to England. In 1572 the terrible Saint Bartholomew’s day massacre in Paris led to widespread sympathy for them. The persecution which they had suffered was really terrible and many of them arrived in England smuggled in baskets of vegetables or under heaps of coal. If they were found they would often be killed by officials from the King of France.
These arrivals were hard working with many skills and the British
government wished to encourage them - but some native Londoners blamed the Huguenots for an outbreak of plague in
1593 and attacked their homes. Some of the refugees settled in the Spitalfields
area included many doctors, schoolmasters, merchants, mariners and shipwrights.
A number of highly-skilled gunsmiths, goldsmiths and silversmiths helped transform
the London economy. By 1690 goods that had previously been imported from France
were made in London because of the Huguenots. They revolutionised production
with new methods of manufacture in, for example, glass-making. Huguenot
goldsmiths produced a surge of improvement in the quality of gold and silver smithing
in London. They were most famous for weaving and known for their work with silk
in the Spitalfields area. Much
of their involvement was with what we would call luxury trades and helped
establish London as a major market for quality goods.
Perhaps the best known example of a successful Huguenot family is that of the Courtauld family who came to London in the late 17th century, initially working as gold and silversmiths. A younger generation set up a fabric business in Essex which was to become the world’s leading man-made fabrics producer. They are still with us today, along with the art gallery which they founded. They remain an important international company specialising in fibre and chemicals.
The picture we have of the Huguenots in London is of weavers and other workers in craft industries producing expensive items in areas like Spitalfields and Soho. Was there a community like that in Greenwich? They seem to have lived mainly in Crooms Hill. What were the backgrounds and what were the lives like of some of the families who came as refugees to Crooms Hill over the centuries and what they did do to make a living? I also have the feeling that Crooms Hill was a bit posh even in the 17th century.
I am not sure if music counts as an industry or not? We can clearly argue that it is an industry today as many copies of a musical piece are sold and promoted commercially. I'm far from sure if it counted in the 17th century with individual musicians playing at what were effectively social events. The earliest known family to come to Greenwich was a family of musicians - the Laniers. They came here when they were headhunted by Elizabethan courtiers looking to impress the Queen with a new group of musicians. S o they were not actually refugees. Many Lanier family members were talented musicians and succeeding generations included some with many cultural gifts. As musicians they were a group who played at events as required and, obviously, as the Court was often in Greenwich they moved here to be close to their audiences. They were wealthy people and able to patronise other artists. Their cultural interests and their wealth all show in – for example – in the pictures they bought and the artists they knew. Some of the pictures they owned are in our national collections. They lived not only in Crooms Hill but in various places in Greenwich Deptford and of course elsewhere but their focus seems to have been Crooms Hill and they were perhaps the first people from a Huguenot background to do so.
Some incomers were welcomed by the Government – a Huguenot French general who came here in the 1680s as a refugee was the Marquis de Ruvigny. Because of his military record and his status he had been allowed to leave France without any violence. He needed somewhere to live and was lucky enough to be housed by the Government. He was given the Queen's House in Greenwich - you know the Queen's House, it's the central bit of the Maritime Museum with colonnades on either side. I always think it looks a bit cold to live in but it beats a back room in a dodgy hotel.
Most of these Crooms Hill based refugees seem to have had sources of income which are not really anything to do with industry except in its widest definition. They were sugar traders and, yes, some were involved with slavery. Others had wharves and other commercial interests rather than manufacturing. There were doctors and merchants and all sorts of traders and bankers. Many had businesses in the City of London
One example were the Galabins who came to London from Amsterdam - the son, Jean Baptiste, working initially as a Weaver and then as a watchmaker. He lived and maybe worked in Greenwich, had numerous children and several important properties. One of his sons became a successful printer.
Perhaps the most well known and distinguished descendant of all
the Huguenots in Greenwich was the architect. Samuel Sanders Teulon, whose Gothic
churches and other buildings have original decoration and idiosyncratic interpretation, characterised by the use of polychromatic
brickwork’. He has been the subject of both admiration and dislike. There is apparently a description by Pevsner
who says that the building is describing ‘is particularly revolting’. I've always rather liked Teulon
buildings which are at least noticeable.
However as far as the Crooms Hill Huguenots and industry is concerned we need to look at Samuel’s background. The original Teulon family member in Greenwich was Antoine de Teulon described as a hatter and felt maker. He came here in 1689 finding the water of the Ravensbourne OK for felt making. He settled here, living not in Crooms Hill but in the more downmarket Billingsgate Street down by the river. Felt making in France had been revolutionised when one of the workers at a particular works had suffered from syphilis. It was noticed that the felt he made was better matted and easier to mould and waterproof. From then on French felt makers added mercury to their felt and this was made by Antoine Teulon. He stayed in Greenwich and was very involved with the early John Roan School. His daughter married another refugee hatter called Melchior Wagner who got himself a warrant as hatter to the king which included a grace and favour house in Pall Mall.
His son, Antony, was also a felt maker but later changed his profession to become a cabinetmaker. In 1810 a younger, Samuel married a Louise Sanders, daughter of a carpenter. They moved briefly into Hillside on Crooms Hill but soon went down the hill to a property near the Mitre Pub. I found a newspaper report-which I used in one of my Deptford Creek articles. This featured Samuel Teulon who wanted to sell a wharf on the river Ravensbourne at Deptford Bridge. This sounds quite big and grand = it’s got stables for 11 horses and is clearly an important wharf. I had come across him in my researches on the goings on in the early gas industry in Greenwich. In the 1820s he was appointed collector for the South Metropolitan Gas Company in Greenwich .- which really means I think that he was going off chasing what were effectively bad debts - like a bailiff o s a debt collector.
He was also a parish overseer. I'm not entirely sure what
that means but I suspect it excludes debt collecting for Defaulters on their
rates. It was reported by the vestry
that these had been collected 'very partially'. And also that he had reduced the rents
of persons holding leases under the Hatcliffe’s charity to half because of pleas
of agricultural distress. I'm far from
sure if debt collector is industry.
This Greenwich Huguenot Community was
in effect a rather elite group of people living in Crooms Hill which then as
now had some of the nicer houses and a general air of prosperity. This was a
refugee community and one which was had become had to flee their homes because
they were Protestants. Their income came
from work in luxury trades or in commercial and financial services.
Usually we would see Calvinists like
this as being rather severe. If you look
at Scotland for instance or the Puritans in England, they wore plain black and had
rigid rules about the way people conducted themselves. Fun was not allowed. That doesn't seem to be
true of these French refugees =- we see pictures of their lovely houses and the
beautiful clothes the women wore and the general air of comfort and ease. It really doesn't sound so bad living in the
17th century if you could be in Crooms Hill with lots of servants like the Huguenots
community in Greenwich
All of this – and much much more - can
be found in a great new books s ‘Huguenots of Crooms Hill’ by local author and
resident, Adam Pollock.
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