Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

Sat 07 Jul 2007An Irishman's DiaryTower Hamlets is a borough in London's East End. It includes such historic areas as Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Wapping, Mile End, Stepney, Limehouse, Bromley, Poplar, and the Isle of Dogs.It has always been an immigrant area. French Huguenots brought silk weaving to Spitalfields after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Irish navvies were a key part of the workforce in the building of London's 19th-century docklands. At the end of the same century, Jews fleeing the pogroms of eastern and central Europe settled there. From the 1960s onwards Asians, especially Bengalis, came in increasing numbers.