Museum of Immigration and Diversity
The Museum of Immigration and Diversity, known locally as 19 Princelet Street, is one of London's most extraordinary and quietly radical cultural spaces. Housed in a Georgian terraced house in Spitalfields, it tells the layered story of immigration to Britain through the very fabric of the building itself. Unlike conventional museums with permanent open galleries and daily visiting hours, this place operates on an intentionally limited and intimate basis, which only deepens its power. It is widely regarded as one of the most emotionally resonant heritage sites in the country, a building that has absorbed the lives of successive waves of newcomers to Britain and holds their stories in its walls, its floors, and its air.
The house was built in 1719 for a Huguenot silk merchant, part of the great wave of French Protestant refugees who fled persecution in France following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Spitalfields became the heart of the Huguenot community in London, and the street reflects that heritage beautifully. In the nineteenth century, the building passed into the hands of the Irish community, and later became a focal point for the Jewish community that poured into the East End from Eastern Europe from the 1880s onward, fleeing pogroms and persecution in the Russian Empire and beyond. In 1869, a small synagogue was added to the back of the house by a friendly society of Jewish immigrants. It is this synagogue — the Sha'are Tsedek — that gives the building much of its haunting quality today.
The interior of 19 Princelet Street is intentionally and movingly unrenovated. Visitors enter a Georgian townhouse that has been lovingly stabilised but not restored to any single period. Paint peels from the walls in layers that represent different eras and different communities. The synagogue at the rear is small and atmospheric, with wooden pews, faded decorative details, and a palpable sense of the congregations that once prayed there. The building smells of old wood and dust and history in the most literal sense. Natural light filters through aged windows and the effect is of stepping into a space where time has been deliberately paused, where the evidence of multiple overlapping lives remains visible rather than curated away.
The surrounding area of Spitalfields is itself one of the richest historical landscapes in London. Brick Lane runs close by, still a vibrant centre of the Bangladeshi community that has made the East End home since the mid-twentieth century, and lined with curry houses, bakeries, and independent shops. Fournier Street nearby contains the remarkable building that has served successively as a Huguenot chapel, a Methodist chapel, a synagogue, and now a mosque — the Jamme Masjid — an almost unbelievable architectural biography that mirrors the history of the neighbourhood itself. Spitalfields Market is a short walk away, along with Christ Church Spitalfields, the Hawksmoor masterpiece that dominates the area. Dennis Severs' House on Folgate Street offers another immersive experience of Georgian and Victorian Spitalfields life nearby.
Because of its fragile physical state and its dependence on charitable funding, the Museum of Immigration and Diversity opens only on selected days and for specific events, talks, and educational group visits. It is not a place you can simply drop into on any afternoon, which means planning ahead is essential. Opening days are announced on the museum's website and tend to include occasional Sundays and organised tour dates. When it does open, visitor numbers are kept deliberately small, which makes the experience feel genuinely personal and contemplative rather than touristic. The nearest Underground stations are Aldgate East on the District and Hammersmith and City lines, and Liverpool Street, served by multiple lines and National Rail services, both a comfortable walk away.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this place is that its very incompleteness and vulnerability are part of its meaning. The museum has operated for decades in a state of careful precariousness, never fully funded, never fully open, but never quite closed either. A major restoration project has been long discussed and partially undertaken. The building survived the Blitz and survived decades of neglect, and its survival feels contingent and precious. There is something profoundly fitting about a museum dedicated to the experience of displacement and refuge being itself a place that has had to fight for its survival and its place in the city. It is a building that asks its visitors to think about what it means to arrive somewhere new, to make a home, and to leave traces that outlast you.