Often maligned as ‘economic migrants’, working-class people have always come to London to do business, make families, invent objects, bring pleasures, help each other and sometimes fight each othher. One old area of central London shows strong and sympathetic traces of the migrations of poorer folk from the late-18th to 20th centuries from near and far, including from within England itself. The walk begins in the Fleet Ditch and works its way uphill through early Italian and Irish settlements in Saffron Hill into areas of more mixing, taking note of Blacks from Africa via the West Indies and ending with Jewish migrations from numerous locations that made Hatton Garden’s Diamond Street.

On the weekend you can see traces of old migrations as well as new – it’s clearly still an area favoured for opening new small businesses.

Laura Agustín is an historian and anthropologist interested in illuminating the lives of unnamed people in history – the ‘ordinary folk’.

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura’s longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class.