Brick Lane

This guide to Brick Lane in London follows one plain Georgian building at the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street through the waves of people who have used it since 1743, when French Protestant refugees called Huguenots built it as their chapel after fleeing religious persecution. It traces the building's turn as a synagogue after 1881, when Eastern European Jews fled pogroms in Russia and settled in Spitalfields, and the rabbi who once led its pulpit before rising to a far larger role. You'll hear how the Bangladeshi community that later filled the same neighborhood came to it too. Look up at the building's plain facade as you pass Fournier Street.