A. Moscow has always been a multicultural city. If we look back at its history, we will see that there were several foreign communities living in Moscow on a permanent basis. We all know about German people inhabiting the banks of the Yauza river, where little Peter, the future tsar of all Russia, ran around, made friends and got his first ideas of learning about ships and fleets. But what do we know about the British community of Moscow? Did it even exist?
B. The first ties between Russia and Britain were formed in the middle of the 16th century in the time of Ivan the Terrible. It was then that some wealthy British merchants founded the Muscovy Company which held a monopoly on trade between Britain and Russia until 1698. The building of its Moscow headquarters was granted to the company by the tsar in 1556 and can be still visited at 4, Varvarka Street, known to us now as The Old English Court.
C. Beginning from the time of Peter the Great, several talented British military men moved to Russia. Many of them served as army generals and navy admirals, defending Russian borders in different wars and battles. Among the most famous ones were Field Marshall James Bruce, Field Marshall Barclay de Tolly and Admiral Thomas Mackenzie, all of them of Scottish origin.
D. In the 18th century, British industrialists made themselves known in Russia. One of the most outstanding figures was Robert McGill, who lived in Moscow and served as an intermediary between Lancashire mill engineers and the Russian cotton industry, and built over 150 mills (cotton factories) in Russia. Robert McGill had a house in Spiridonovka Street and together with his wife Jane was a prominent member of the British community in Moscow.
E. If you talk to Moscow concert musicians who were active between the 1960s and the 1990s, they will tell you of the fantastic acoustics of the “Melodiya” recording studio at 8, Voznesensky Lane, which they lovingly called ‘kirche’, mistakenly thinking it was a German church. This building, designed in the English neo-gothic architectural style, was in fact built in 1885 by Robert McGill and is St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, which was used as a recording studio in Soviet times.
F. Another spectacular example of British architecture in Moscow is the old building of TsUM next to the Bolshoy and Maly theatres. Built in the early 1900s, it was back then the biggest department store in Moscow. It was owned by Scottish merchants Andrew Muir and Archie Mirrielees. Mayakovsky mentions Muir&Mirrielees in several of his poems, while Chekhov named his dogs after its two owners.
G. In 1887, two other cotton industrialists from Lancashire, Clement and Harry Charnock, moved to work at a cotton factory in Orekhovo-Zuevo, near Moscow. They were both great football fans and decided to introduce this game to the workers of the factory. This resulted in the first professional football team in Russia which after the Revolution became the core of Moscow Dynamo team.