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Today is the final day of Refugee Week, a time to reflect on the contribution refugees have made to the UK and to promote better understanding of why people seek sanctuary. Timely, as recent Europeans elections show that we are becoming more hard-hearted against those less privileged than ourselves. To mark the day, 19 Princelet Street, a 1719 house in the east end of London, was, unusually, open to the public. Owned by one family of absentee landlords from 1722 until 1979, it has been home to generations of incomers.

The house is in appalling condition but you can climb through the acro-props holding up the ceiling and see an exhibition by local school children, many of whom are from the Bangladeshi families who represent the most recent arrivals in this part of London. They write letters and newspaper articles and make drawings from the point of view of their predecessors: Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France in the seventeenth century, Irish people fleeing famine in the 1840s, Jews fleeing persecution in Poland and Russia in the 1860s.

Although almost all of us have an incomer somewhere back in our family histories, most of us who have cameras and the leisure to use them are lucky enough never to have to consider the question asked in one thought-provoking exhibit: if you were driven from your home at short notice, what would you put in the one small suitcase you could carry into exile?

Well, what would you take?