The Huguenots were French and Flemish Protestants who fled their own countries because of religious persecution. There were two main waves of Huguenot migration – in the latter half of the sixteenth century and towards the end of the seventeenth century. In all, over 200,000 Huguenots fled to the UK and Netherlands.
Huguenot migrants possessed considerable knowledge of the textiles industries –especially silk-making. The Courtauld family established a prospering silk industry at Braintree, Essex, while Huguenot weavers also concentrated in the Spitalfields area of London. Lewis (Or Louis) Paul invented the method of roller spinning that was later developed by Richard Arkwright to such great effect.
Elsewhere, the Huguenot brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier invented their revolutionary papermaking machine and Henry Bessemer, born in England of a Huguenot family, pioneered the first cheap, mass-production steel making process.
Skilled and industrious Huguenot workers injected British industry with a new vitality, bringing new ideas and technologies that were to transform life in many ways.