Photo: Nangpa uk · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Museum of Immigration and Diversity

Grade II* listed Huguenot merchant house and former synagogue in Spitalfields that tells stories of migration; closed for repairs.

Temporarily closed

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Temporarily closed. The house is closed to the public while repair and safety works are carried out. The operator hopes to offer small group tours again but has not announced a date.

About the museum

The house at 19 Princelet Street was built in 1719 as a merchant’s home in Spitalfields. By 1740 it was occupied by the Ogier family, Huguenot silk merchants whose ancestors had fled religious persecution in France. A weavers’ garret was added to the top of the house in the late eighteenth century.

In 1869 the building was bought by Polish Jewish immigrants. A synagogue was consecrated in the house in 1870 and extended into the rear garden in the early 1890s. It served the local community for more than a century and was deconsecrated in 1980. The upper floors were the home of David Rodinsky, who vanished in the 1960s and whose rooms became the subject of books and local legend.

After the synagogue closed, the house passed into charitable care and was opened to visitors as a museum of immigration and diversity, telling the story of the many groups who have settled in the East End. The building is fragile and is on the Buildings at Risk Register; repairs have been supported by Historic England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It is now run by The Spitalfields Historic Building Trust, which is making the house safe and accessible and is documenting and conserving the synagogue textiles and other objects with the Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive.