Audio walking tour of East London

Spitalfields is the architectural legacy of French Huguenot silk weavers. This immigrant community sought refuge in London in the late seventeenth century, following religious persecution in France. Barred from trading in the City of London by the guilds, Huguenots set up their industry and their homes close by in Spitalfields. Dr Nadia Valman and Professor Miles Ogborn relay its history.

Mile End Waste was the East End version of Speakers’ Corner in Victorian times. In the 1860s William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army preached here. Dr Alastair Owens explains Booth’s approach to tackling East End poverty and overcrowding; issues that troubled many social reformers of the day.

On 31 August 1888 the body of Mary Jane Kelly, a victim of Jack the Ripper, was discovered on a street behind what is now Whitechapel Tube Station. From crime and poverty to radical politics, Dr Alastair Owens talks about the Victorian East End's global significance.

Petticoat Lane Market is one of the oldest retail experiences in Britain, dating back to the seventeenth century. Dr Nadia Valman discusses the market’s heyday up to World War II as the social and commercial hub of the Jewish East End.

Dr Alastair Owens discusses the Jewish Soup Kitchen, on Brune Street in east London. The Kitchen opened in 1902 to provide food and work skills for poor Ashkanasi Jewish migrants who had fled persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe.