In search of the Huguenots

The Huguenots, I heard, settled just outside the London city wall.

They took up residence in streets with names that bear witness to their trade

but now gleam with the harder lustre of glass.

The museum of London is at the centre of this new development.

When I asked if they had any record of the Huguenots I was told that, for now, the history of London ended at 1666. Before the fire or the plague, and Daniel Defoe (who is buried close by)

was but a child of five, and Beech Street

another of the Huguenot streets, was yet to be lined in beech trees, or set ringing with the sound of caged birds and clattering looms.

There is nothing left now. The houses of the Huguenots long razed to the ground. Temporary tunnels

connect one busy road to the next, and one tower block to another. Few look up, or around, or wonder at what there was, and few, I suspect, notice this

a ghost cycle, one of many that are chained to posts throughout the capital: white and without pedals or chain. A memorial to a cyclist fatally caught mid-journey.