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From Sylhet to Sylhet, London: Keeping Culture Alive Abroad

, 2 min read, in Culture and Diaspora

How the tea gardens and rivers of Sylhet became part of East London's story, and the everyday ways British Bangladeshi families keep that culture going.

Say "Londoni" in Sylhet and people know exactly what you mean: a family with someone in Britain. A large majority of British Bangladeshis trace their roots to the Sylhet region, with its tea gardens, hills and wide haors. Over three generations, that connection has turned parts of England into a second home for Sylheti culture.

How the journey began

Sylheti men were working as seamen on British ships long before most of us were born, and some settled in port cities like London. After the Second World War, more came to work in factories, mills and restaurants. Through the 1970s and 1980s wives and children followed, and communities grew in Tower Hamlets, Camden, Birmingham, Bradford, Oldham, Luton and beyond.

Brick Lane and Banglatown

Brick Lane's minaret above the old chapel building
Brick Lane's minaret above the old chapel building

No street tells the story better than Brick Lane. Its mosque, Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, occupies a building put up in 1743 as a church for French Huguenot refugees. It later became a Methodist chapel and then a synagogue, before opening as a mosque in 1976. One building, three centuries of people making East London home.

Today the local council ward is called Spitalfields and Banglatown. Nearby Altab Ali Park, named after a young textile worker killed in a racist attack in 1978, holds a Shaheed Minar where the community gathers every 21 February. Each spring the Boishakhi Mela fills the streets for Pohela Boishakh, the Bengali New Year.

Keeping it going at home

Culture doesn't only live in festivals. It lives in the ordinary things families choose to do:

  • Speaking Sylheti and Bangla at home, even when the children answer in English.
  • Cooking the food: a pot of dal on a weeknight, shatkora in the curry, pitha when winter comes.
  • Dressing for the occasions: a panjabi for Eid, a jamdani for a wedding, a gamcha for the beach.
  • Staying connected with desh through visits, calls with relatives, and the stories grandparents tell.

Why we started this shop

HandcraftUK exists for this in-between life. We want to make the cloth, crafts and flavours of Bangladesh easy to find in England, made by hand and delivered to your door, so the next generation grows up knowing them too.

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