More recent examples include the Hanseatic merchants of the Middle Ages and also the 16th-century Protestant refugees who emigrated to Great Britain to flee the instability caused by the religious wars after the Reformation.

By the end of the 17th century, a significant German community had developed, consisting mostly of businessmen, mainly from Hamburg; sugar bakers; and other economic migrants.

The British Royal Family retained the German surname Saxe-Coburg-Gotha until 1917, when, in response to anti-German sentiment during the First World War, it legally changed it to the English-sounding Windsor.

It served as a religious centre for generations of German immigrants who worked in the East End sugar refineries, and meat and baking trades until the First World War.

[7] A large proportion of these people are thought to be the children of British military based in Germany at the time of their birth, who have since returned to the UK with their families.

[14] Other than in areas with army bases, clusters of people born in Germany are found in West London, particularly around Richmond, where there is a German school.

There are also areas and buildings named after famous Germans, such as Holbein Place in Central London, named after the Renaissance painter Hans Holbein the Younger, as well as the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, an independent museum in Bath dedicated to the life and works of the famous astronomer William Herschel, who discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.

In 1818 Johann Heinrich Schröder founded with his brother, the London-based firm Schroders, today one of the world's largest investment banks.