Jewish Heritage Report
Vol. I, Nos. 3-4 / Winter 1997-98
Lottery to Fund Survey of UK Jewish Monuments
England's Heritage Lottery Funds Survey of Jewish
Monuments
by Sharman Kadish
England's Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded the Jewish Memorial Council
£146,300 (US $240,000) to undertake a survey of historic Jewish buildings
to be directed by ISJM board member Sharman Kadish. Dr. Kadish, co-founder
of the Working Party on Jewish Monuments says: "It will be the first
survey of synagogues, cemeteries and other Jewish buildings in the UK and
Ireland." Dr. Kadish has been involved with Jewish heritage preservation
for ten years and is author or editor of several books, most recently Building
Jerusalem: Jewish Architecture in Britain (London: Vallentine Mitchell,
1996). She filed this report for JHR.
Jews in Britain, unlike those in Continental Europe, have enjoyed 300
years of continuous settlement. A unique physical legacy of Jewish landmarks,
both sacred and secular, survives: synagogues, burial grounds, mikvot (ritual
bathhouses) and social architecture. Much of the architectural heritage
of British Jewry has been lost through wartime bombing, demographic shift
and urban renewal, and that which remains is vulnerable to vandalism and
decay. In comparison with those of Christian denominations, Jewish buildings
remain under-represented on the Statutory National Monuments List.
The Jewish Built Heritage in the UK & Ireland is the first comprehensive
survey of Jewish monuments and sites ever undertaken in Britain, and the
recognition which it has already received from official sources indicates
that the 'heritage industry' has at last woken up to the reality of a multi-cultural
society.
The survey is being co-ordinated by the author under the auspices of the
Jewish Memorial Council, London, a registered charity. It will cover extant
Jewish monuments and sites in Britain and Ireland which date from before
World War II. Building types will include synagogues, burial grounds, ritual
bathhouses (mikvot), a handful of rare archaeological sites, and
other buildings of Jewish interest, such as schools, hospitals and soup
kitchens. Research will also focus on architects who designed for the Jewish
community.
A computerized database is being created for the project and fieldwork.
It will include photography and measured drawings and will be carried out
by graduate students of several departments of architecture and building
conservation. Project partners already include Oxford Brookes and Leicester
De Montfort Universities, and further participants are being sought. The
output of the survey, both physical and digital, will be stored at the
National Monuments Record in Swindon, and it is hoped that a major publication
based on the project will appear in due course.
In addition to scholarly research, the survey aims to promote preservation
on a practical level through the listing (landmarking) of the most important
sites, raising public awareness and knowledge about the Jewish architectural
heritage and encouraging Jewish cultural tourism in Britain. In 1995 the
Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage attracted seed funding totaling £6,000
thanks to the generosity of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments
of England and the Royal Institute of British Architects. Indeed, the Survey
of the Jewish Built Heritage was the only recipient of the RIBA Historical
Research Trust award for 1995.
In 1997 a successful bid was made on behalf of the Survey by the Jewish
Memorial Council, London (a registered charity) for support from the Heritage
Lottery Fund. The Heritage Lottery Fund was one of several funds set up
to distribute on a charitable basis monies raised by the British Government
through the recently instituted National Lottery. To date, £146,300
has been awarded for the Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage. Match funding
partners are now being sought given that:
* The Heritage Lottery Fund has pledged funding up to 75% of the total
cost of the project.
* The Republic of Ireland lies outside the geo-political remit of the Heritage
Lottery Fund.
* The Heritage Lottery Fund cannot sponsor publications.
Liverpool, England. Old Hebrew Congregation. Princes Road
(1874). One of the many splendid Jewish buildings to be surveyed. Photo:
Abe Magid, 1991.
The Jewish Built Heritage in Ireland
The Survey is seeking sponsorship for its research and field
work in the Republic of Ireland.
The Medieval Annals of Inishfallon record the visit of five Jews to the
High King at Limerick, but no settled community reached Ireland before
the expulsion from mainland Britain in 1290. However, following the expulsion
from Spain in 1492, Jews apparently arrived in the southern Irish seaports,
and there are references to Sephardic Jews in Ireland from the 1500s. Jews
were not officially allowed to reside in Britain itself until the Readmission
under Oliver Cromwell in 1656.
The major concentration of Jews in Ireland has always been in Dublin. The
first official synagogue was established there by Portuguese Marranos in
about 1660. The burial ground at Ballybough dates back to 1718 making it
the oldest in the entire Isles outside London. A second Dublin burial ground
was opened at Dolphin's Barn in 1898. Dublin also boasts the only extant
purpose-built Victorian Synagogue in Ireland, at Adelaide Road. It was
designed in 1892 by a local architect, J.J. O'Callaghan, in Romanesque
style, and the only functioning mikveh left in the whole of Ireland
was added in 1915. The complex is now under threat of redundancy since
the Jewish community has largely moved from the city to the suburbs. The
building is entirely unprotected as there is no effective landmarking system
in the Republic.
Cork had a Jewish burial ground in 1725 but no traces of it remain. A later
burial ground (1885) does survive, and there is a tiny abandoned cemetery
in Limerick (1902). A community at Waterford was never large enough to
purchase a burying place let alone build a synagogue.
The Jewish community in Ireland, which was augmented by immigration from
eastern Europe in the 1881-1914 period and also by Ireland's status as
a neutral power during the Second World War, has declined from a peak of
3,000 to an estimated 1,200 today. Farsighted members of the Dublin community
have taken admirable steps to preserve their material culture with the
opening in 1984 of the Irish Jewish Museum. It is housed in a former turn-of-the-century
chevrah synagogue in the primarily immigrant neighborhood of Portobello.
Nevertheless, help in the form of a professional survey of the disappearing
Irish Jewish heritage is urgently needed. $5000 would go a long way
towards documenting the Jewish Built Heritage in Ireland.
For further information please contact: Dr. Sharman Kadish, Project
Co-ordinator, Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage, Jewish Memorial Council,
25 Enford Street, London W1H 2DD UK, e-mail: jmonuments@btinternet.com,
Fax: 0044-171-706-1710
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Updated: 7-Jul-98