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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
London was founded by foreigners, and for 2000 years it
has been one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the
world. London is a City of many peoples and many
faiths. On this entertaining and revealing full day guided
tour we explore the diversity of Londoners, combining a
couple of short walks with a coach tour, free time for
lunch in Chinatown and an afternoon visit to the beautiful
Hindu temple, or Mandir at Neasden.
Our day starts on the border of the Square Mile and the
East End, at Spitalfields, at 10-30am with time to buy
morning refreshments. In little more than a stone’s throw
we can walk through a fascinating part of London settled
successively by the Huguenots, the Irish, the Jews and
the Bengali and Somali communities. Above the
doorways of the tall, thin brick houses built in the
Georgian era look out for the wooden spools that were
put there to mark the 300th anniversary of the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes which led to the arrival of many
French Protestant Huguenots in Spitalfields. Look inside
the doorways of houses later lived in by Jewish families
for mezuzahs - thin boxes holding little parchment scrolls
on which are inscribed passages from the Torah.
On Brick Lane there is a mosque that was once a
synagogue and before that a Huguenot Chapel.
Back on the coach we’ll take you on a tour looking at the
various communities that have come to London. From
earliest times the French have been here, notably in the
wake of William the Conqueror, who it must be said,
never conquered London. Many Welsh arrived with the
Tudors or as drovers on the long walk from the Welsh
Hills or the Isle of Anglesey. We even built London’s first
bypass for them to herd their beasts to Smithfield Market
and avoid the chaos of a
bull in a china shop.
In Clerkenwell the Italian
colony were mainly
employed in trades such
as organ grinding, knife
grinding and mosaic
craftsmanship. Ice and
later ice cream selling
were also Italian pursuits
in the capital and
chestnuts imported
from
the north of Italy were
sold by Italian boys
during the winter months.
Devout Catholics the
Italians in London built
their own church -
St. Peter’s (right) where
Enrico Caruso is said to
have sung on the church
steps after Sunday mass in 1902 when he was in London
to sing with Nellie Melba (herself an Australian import)
at the Opera House in Covent Garden.
For almost 50 years St Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar
Square, a stone’s throw from London’s Chinatown has been
home to an active Cantonese speaking congregation - the
language of Hong Kong. More recently a Mandarin Chinese
The Cosmopolitan London Tour