1. Huguenot origins

The earliest mention of Club Row as an animal market dates back to the late seventeenth century when Huguenot refugees arrived in England from France, where they had been persecuted as Protestants by the Catholic regime. Half of these 50,000 refugees settled in London, with many buying properties in the Spitalfields area, where housing was cheap. Many Huguenots were silk weavers and had come from major silk-weaving cities in the south of France. Their arrival in Spitalfields had a major impact on the area economy and the East End quickly became known as “weaver town.” In addition to their silk weaving expertise, the Huguenots had a deep-rooted love of caged songbirds.

Why birds? There are many theories as to why the Huguenots kept birds but the most logical explanation is that birdsong provided entertainment for the weavers while they worked, much like radio in factories today. As the eighteenth-century antiquarian Reverend Isaac Taylor noted, “The songs of canaries, finches, larks, and linnets enliven the weavers at their weary work” (quoted in Agnew, p 259).

Canaries in particular became synonymous with the Huguenot community in England. For this reason, they were used as an anti-immigrant metaphor by some British writers, as in the anonymous poem, “Canary Birds Naturalised in Utopia” (c.1708):

In our unhappy days of Yore,

When foreign Birds, from German Shore,

Came flocking to Utopia’s Coast,

And o’er the Country rul’d the Roast:-

Of our good people did two-thirds

So much admire Canary birds

For outward Show, or finer Feathers

Far more regarded than all others.

We bought ’em dear and fed ’em well,

Till they began for to rebel.

The “Utopia” referenced in this poem is England, with the canary birds representing the Huguenots. The author does not distinguish clearly between France and Germany (which incidentally had a more developed culture of canary fancying), much as today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric lumps together refugees from different countries. Hence “foreign birds” stands generally for unwelcome foreigners, with Huguenots the most visible group. Although there was no general fear of refugees rebelling in London, the poem expresses apprehension at the thought of such an event, a symptom of anxiety among part of the English population at a sudden influx of Frenchmen.

Spitalfields was largely comprised of open fields at the time the Huguenots settled there. A street named Club Row formally came into existence only in the early eighteenth century, but the modern design of the area was only built in the late nineteenth century when architect George Dance the Younger implemented a grand design of circuses and crescents joining East London streets: Club Row was attached at the southern base of Arnold Circus. Maps from earlier periods indicate that the Row originally led to an open space called Richardson's Garden (see map) upon which Arnold Circus was erected.

While hard evidence is scarce, this background suggests that the bird market on Club Row began in the late seventeenth century and expanded in later decades as the area developed. By this point, the steady influx of new refugee groups to London had resulted in the Huguenots losing their identity as a distinct religious community. Yet some connection to the past remained in the fact that in the twentieth century many of the Club Row market traders who continued the traditions of caging and selling birds claimed to descend from Huguenot refugees.