Huguenot Museum

Day out in Rochester and visit to the only Museum of Huguenot History in the UK. It was shocking to find out how these French protestants suffered religious persecution and escaped from France as refugees from the 16th century. Large numbers settled in England from the 1680s and it is believed that 1 in 6 English people may be descended from Huguenots.

Many of the settlers were silk weavers and had homes and workshops in the Spitalfields area of London where I went to school. That area has changed beyond all recognition although the magnificent Georgian houses still remain and one that has been restored as a silk weavers house can be visited . My old school was demolished to be replaced by an office block but the chapel was saved by quick thinking historians and is now a high end restaurant.

Back to our visit to Rochester :
At the Huguenot Museum there was an exhibition of the artworks of Margot Selby, a woven textile artist and the connection her artworks have with the legacy of Huguenot weavers. See my blip and extras.

Good lunch at our favourite Thai restaurant; browsed the shops; then returned to being a tourist and visited Rochester Cathedral. They are participating in the 70,273 Project . It represents a dark period in history when that number of babies, children, men and women were killed between january 1940 and August 1941.(Hitlers Aktion T4 Programme) The Project is a mass petition for love and humanity, being signed in stitches of red crosses from people all over the world on over 100 countries. The crosses in the nave of Rochester Cathedral represent 13,817 lives.(extra)

Today we seem to have spent time reflecting on how people have suffered for their beliefs and the injustices that many still suffer. I fail to comprehend how one human can inflict such suffering on another.