Upstairs Downstairs in The East End - 1680-1760: Episode One

"Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London …"

Yes, you're entitled to slap me hard for that earworm.

We'll start off in Whitechapel. It's the morning after our Jack the Ripper Tour and we're slightly fuzzy-headed from one too many pints of London Pride.

Old Dive is going to walk us all clear-headed. We are threading our merry way north to Spitalfields to see what life was like, both upstairs and downstairs, for the Huguenot silk-weavers and merchants in their heyday between the Restoration and the Georges.

We shall pass the historic Whitechapel Church Bell Foundry (where both Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were cast), soon to be demolished to make way for a hideous, glass and steel 108 bedroom "boutique" hotel with swimming pool. If you know anyone who works for US developer Raycliff, please go and kick them for me. Hard and repeatedly.

We shall turn left off Brick Lane into Fournier Street, at the junction of which stands the Brick Lane Mosque, which in the late nineteenth century was the Brick Lane Synagogue and before that, le Neuve Eglise, the Huguenot church constructed in 1743 to reflect the growing wealth of the silk merchants; a lovely building whose changing forms of worship echo the centuries of ever-evolving social upheaval in the East End.

Here the houses become larger and more elegant as we move into the silk merchants' quarter. Note the two doors on the front of the middle house above; the grand door for customers and social visitors, the humble "tradesman's entrance" for deliveries, servants and the hoi polloi. Know your place!

We shall pass (on our way to Folgate Street via Hawksmoor's glorious All Saints' Church and the joyful bustle of Spitalfields' Market) the house (left) and studio (right) of everyone's favourite living works of art and National Treasures Gilbert and George and shall pause for a moment to discuss changing fashions.

Most windows on Fournier street are like those on the right, with the sash box and frame fully visible on the front face of the brickwork (see also the photos above) and were usually painted a dark colour, though current fashion is for off-white.

After several fires, the style of window changed by legislation in the early 1700s, moving the sash box and frame back behind the front skin of brickwork and tucking them out of sight, like those on G&G's house on the left. This gave a larger glazed area for the same opening and reduced the risk of fire spreading up the building via burning sash boxes. The reveals were usually painted white to bring more light into the rooms.

So, shall we vault this perfectly positioned bollard, venture inside our time machine and plunge down the rabbit hole to the Huguenot heyday? Mrs. Bridges awaits …