The French Church on Soho Square represents almost 500 years of Huguenot life in London

The French Protestant Church on Soho Square is the last remaining Huguenot church in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

As I was walking around Soho Square recently, in search of Soho’s Jewish history and of local architectural landmarks, I also visited the two churches on the square: Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, which I described last Sunday, and the French Protestant Church.

The French Protestant Church of London (Église protestante française de Londres) is a Reformed or Presbyterian church that has served the French-speaking community of London since 1550. The church on Soho Square is the last remaining Huguenot church in London and is a Grade II* listed building designed by Sir Aston Webb and built in 1891-1893.

The tympanum above the basket-arched double doors holds J Prangnelli’s 1950 commemorative carving, depicting the arrival of the first Huguenots by sea, and the signing of the 1550 charter, with a Huguenot cross above. A frieze at first-floor level has gilded lettering that reads ‘Eglise Protestante Francaise de Londres’.

The church on Soho Square is the direct successor of the French-speaking Walloon church founded in 1550 at Threadneedle Street, London, with a Royal Charter from Edward VI. Throughout its history, it has been widely regarded as the ‘Mother Church’ of French Protestantism in England.

The church on Soho Square is the direct successor of the French-speaking church founded in 1550 with a Royal Charter from Edward VI (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

French-speaking religious refugees and followers of the French reformer Jean Calvin arrived in London seeking sanctuary during the Reformation in the 16th century. The Polish reformer Jan à Lasco, who was also active in London in the mid-16th century, held services at Lambeth Palace for refugees. His proposals for a reformed church for foreign worshippers was encouraged by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of Edward VI.

Edward VI signed a royal charter on 24 July 1550 for the foundation of the Strangers’ Church in London for those ‘banished and cast out from their own country for the sake of the Gospel of Christ’. It was the first of the foreign Protestant churches serving the Dutch, Italian and French-speaking refugee communities in London. The charter authorised the use of Saint Augustine’s Chapel in Austin Friars in the City of London and required royal approval for the appointment of ministers.

The church grew rapidly, with French, Flemish and German-speaking members. Within three months, the French Huguenot congregation moved to the nearby chapel of Saint Anthony’s Hospital in Threadneedle Street.

Services were suspended during the reign of Mary I, Jan à Lasco and his followers returned to the continent, and the French Church went into hiding. The church was formed again in 1559 after the accession of Elizabeth I, and Calvin sent Nicolas des Gallars to formalise church governance based on his church in Genevan model, but adapted to Elizabeth I’s via media for English church life. Elizabeth I appointed the Bishop of London, Edmund Grindal, as superintendent, allaying doubts about allowing freedom of worship to a foreign church.

Three smaller French Walloon churches linked with London were formed in Canterbury, Southampton and Norwich between 1565 and 1575. They formed a network of French-speaking churches that offered a haven from persecution in the Walloon region close to Northern France, and from the Wars of Religion in France (1562-1598).

A new wave of refugees arrived after the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572, and who were helped by the French churches in London, Canterbury, Norwich, Southampton, Rye and Winchelsea. The French civil wars were brought to a close by Henri IV, who had a Protestant mother and a Catholic father, and the Edict of Nantes in 1598 extended religious toleration in France.

Archbishop Laud and others tried to pressurise the French churches into conforming to the Church of England in the 17th century. Some churches adopt a translation of the Book of Common Prayer, but the Threadneedle Street church retained its constitution and its style of services.

The church on Threadneedle Street was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The second church building was erected within three years and reopened in 1669. Samuel Pepys the diarist and naval administrator, had links to influential members of the congregation, and is known to have worshipped at the church in Threadneedle Street with his French wife, Elizabeth de St Michel.

The frieze at first-floor level has gilded lettering that reads ‘Eglise Protestante Francaise de Londres’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The French Church of London played a vital role with the arrival of a new wave of Huguenot with renewed religious persecution in France. The first refugees began arriving from the Poitou region in 1681. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685 led to the flight of half a million Huguenots, with 40,000 to 50,000 arriving in Britain. In some cases families split up and fled in smaller groups, with parents often forced to leave children behind. The church in Threadneedle Street built a chapel of ease in 1687 to accommodate its burgeoning congregation.

The refugees did not intend to stay in England, originally hoping Louis XIV’s religious policies would be reversed. But by 1700, there were around 25,000 refugees in London, worshipping in 24 Huguenot churches and chapels.

From the outset, there was a divide between the Calvinists who followed the non-conformist practices at the church in Threadneedle Street, and those who adopted the form of Anglicanism found at the French Church of the Savoy, which used a French translation of the Anglican liturgy. The church in Threadneedle Street was the principal church for the Huguenot community in Spitalfields, including many weavers. The Savoy Church served a community in Westminster that included tailors, goldsmiths, silversmiths, gunmakers and watchmakers.

There were more than 30 Huguenot churches and chapels in London by the early 18th century and more than 20 outside London. But integration gradually led to many French churches closing. The double fees for baptism exacted from Huguenot congregations by parish priests, and the 1753 Act requiring all marriages to take place in the Church of England, contributed to many second-generation and third-generation refugees leaving the Huguenot churches for Anglican churches such as Christ Church, Spitalfields, and Saint Anne’s, Soho.

Only three French churches remained in London in 1841. Two of those conformed to the Church of England, and the Threadneedle Street church was the only remaining non-conformist French church in London. That church was obliged to give up its building in 1841 to allow the expansion of the Bank of England and the rebuilding of Threadneedle Street.

The church moved to imposing premises in Saint Martin le Grand in City of London. The congregation remained there until 1887, when the church was demolished to make way for an extension to the headquarters of the General Post Office.

The basket-arched double doors of the French Protestant Church on the north side of Soho Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Temporary premises were found, first at the Athenaeum Hall in Tottenham Court Road, and then at a chapel behind 7 Soho Square, while a new church was being built. Two houses at 8 and 9 Soho Square were bought for £10,500 as a freehold site for the new church, accommodating a congregation of 400.

The consistory of the French Protestant Church of London commissioned the architect Sir Aston Webb (1849-1930) to design the new church in 1889, and it was built by Higgs and Hill in 1891-1893.

Webb is known for designing the principal façade of Buckingham Palace and the main building of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was president of the Royal Academy (1919-1924), and was the founding chair of the London Society.

Webb was born in Clapham on 22 May 1849, the son of the watercolourist Edward Webb. He received his initial architectural training with Banks and Barry and spent a year travelling in Europe and Asia, before returning to London in 1874 to set up his own practice.

Webb worked with Ingress Bell (1836-1914) over 23 years and their major commissions include the Victoria Law Courts in Birmingham (1886). At the University of Birmingham (1900-1912), the original scheme in the Byzantine style was designed by the Webb-Bell partnership. The free-standing clock tower (‘Old Joe’), over 100 metres high, was the tallest structure in Birmingham until 1966.

Webb also restored the mediaeval Saint Bartholomew-the-Great Church in Smithfield. His other works include Saint Michael’s Court (1903), Cambridge, Admiralty Arch (1908-1909), London, works at King’s College, Cambridge (1908) and the Royal College of Science for Ireland, which now houses Government Buildings in Dublin. He died in Kensington on 21 August 1930.

The foundation stone of Webb’s new church was laid on 28 October 1891 and the building was dedicated on 25 March 1893. The design gives little outward indication of the function of the building, which looks more like an office building than a church.

During World War II, under the leadership of Pastor Frank Christol, chaplain to the Free French Forces, the church on Soho Square provided a rallying point for French Protestant soldiers who had joined General de Gaulle. The resistez badge, incorporating the Huguenot Cross and the Croix de Lorraine, was created as their insignia in 1942.

The carved tympanum by J Prangnelli from 1950 commemorates the 400th anniversary of the church’s foundation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The carved panel by J Prangnelli was inserted into the tympanum above the main entrance in 1950, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the church’s foundation. The building has otherwise seen little significant alteration, remaining essentially intact throughout.

The church has been listed at Grade II* as a striking and very unusual church design, as the work of a distinguished architect, because of two remarkable interiors, both the church itself and the library, and because of the extensive and effective use of architectural terracotta, both externally and internally.

Today, the French Protestant Church in Soho Square and the Dutch Church in Austin Friars – rebuilt in 1950-1954 – survive as the direct successors of the Strangers’ Church founded in London 1550. The church in Soho Square is the only remaining French Protestant church in use in Britain, although regular services are held for French Protestants in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral.

The governing body of the church is the Consistory, and the church has formal links with the French Reformed Churches in France. The Revd Stéphane Desmarais, the pastor of the church since 2013, is the 72nd French-speaking pastor of the church since 1550.

Today, the church on Soho Square is a living reminder of the need to continue to welcome refugees who cross the Channel in boats seeking sanctuary and refuge, and a living reminder too of the riche befits brought by religious pluralism, tolerance and diversity.

The French Protestant Church in Soho Square, glimpsed from the south side of the square through the trees (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time with French saints and writers 7: 9 February 2024

André Trocmé (1901-1971) and Magda Trocmé (1901-1996) have been designated Righteous Among the Nations

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time, the time between Candlemas and the 40 days of Lent, which begins next week on Ash Wednesday.

Charlotte and I are back in Stony Stratford, having spent two days in Paris. In these 11 days in Ordinary Time, my reflections each morning are drawing on the lives of 11 French saints and spiritual writers.

As this series of reflections began, I admitted I am often uncomfortable with many aspects of French spirituality, and that I need to broaden my reading in French spirituality. So, I have turned to 11 figures or writers you might not otherwise expect. They include men and women, Jews and Christians, immigrants and emigrants, monks and philosophers, Catholics and Protestants, and even a few Anglicans.

I have a medical appointment later today. But, before this day gets busy, I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, A reflection on a French saint or writer in spirituality;

2, today’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

The Revd André Trocme (1901-1971) was the pastor in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon for 15 years

French saints and writers: 7, André and Magda Trocmé:

André Trocmé (1901-1971) and his wife Magda Trocmé (1901-1996), a French couple, have been designated Righteous Among the Nations. For 15 years, André was a pastor in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, a remote parish on the Plateau Vivarais-Lignon in south-central France.

His Christian pacifist positions were not well received by the French Protestant Church. In his preaching, he spoke out against discrimination as the Nazis were gaining power in Germany and he urged his Huguenot congregation to hide Jewish refugees from the Holocaust during World War II.

André Trocmé was born on 7 April 1901 in Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmont to a large and economically comfortable Protestant family. When he was 10, his mother Pauline (Schwerdtmenn) died after a car crash, and he was raised by his distant but demanding father, Paul Trocmé, a prosperous curtain manufacturer.

His upbringing was sheltered and strict, but he faced reality when World War I reached his hometown. Trocmé was only 13 as he watched soldiers struggle through the streets after battle. In 1916 he saw the trains taking dead soldiers to the crematoria. His family was split between his mother's German heritage and his half-French brothers, and Trocmé became aware of the notions of identity and loyalty.

His views on pacifism matured through lengthy conversations with a young soldier about the ideals of nonviolence. When the young soldier was killed in battle, Trocmé became more committed to the ideals of pacifism.

When their town was bombed in 1917 by the Germans, the Trocmé family were evacuated to southern Belgium as refugees. This gave André Trocmé an understanding of what it meant to be poor, in contrast to the wealthy life he had known.

After World War I, the Trocmé family moved to Paris, where André studied at the Faculty of Protestant Theology and at the Sorbonne. His convictions about nonviolence and Christian socialism deepened as he studied the Bible and met many like-minded students like himself, including Edouard Theis (1899-1984), who would later join Trocmé in Le Chambon.

Trocmé’s studies were interrupted by conscription in 1921-1923). He did not resist because he wanted to experience the placement in Morocco. When his conscription ended, Trocmé and several of his university colleagues joined the French branch of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

He received a one-year bursary in 1925 for young French theologians from Union Theological Seminary, New York. There Trocmé was a tutor to the children of John D Rockefeller Jr to pay his expenses, and there too he met Magda Grilli, a Russian-Italian woman who was studying social work.

Magda Elisa Larissa Grilli di Cortona was born on 2 November 1901 in Florence. Her father was an Italian born into Florentine. Her Russian-born mother died shortly after giving birth, and for the rest of his wife Magda’s father was a distant figure.

A scholarship in 1925 enabled Magda to attended the New York School of Social Work at Columbia University. She and André met in New York, and they married in 1926.

André Trocmé’s first appointment as a pastor was in Maubeuge, a town in northern France that had been destroyed during World War I. Although French pastors at the time were prohibited from advocating conscientious objection, Trocmé supported men in his town who resisted conscription.

The Trocmé family stayed in Maubeuge for seven years. But by 1932 the dusty, polluted air was taking its toll on them. He searched for a new parish, but was turned down by the first two he applied to. The third, Le Chambon, was more open to pacifists and admired his faith.

André Trocmé and the Revd Edouard Theis founded the Ecole Nouvelle Cévenole in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in 1938, and it later became Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International. Its initial purpose was to prepare young local people to enter university. As war loomed on the horizon, it took in many young Jewish refugees who wished to continue their education.

When Nazi Germany overran France in 1940, André and Magda Trocmé became involved in a network organising the rescue of Jews fleeing Nazi deportations. When the Vichy regime was set up, Trocmé and neighbouring pastors area encouraged their congregations to shelter ‘the people of the Bible’ and for their cities to be a ‘city of refuge.’

Through Trocmé’s role as a catalyst, Le Chambon and surrounding villages became a haven in Nazi-occupied France. Trocmé and his church helped the town develop ways of resisting the Nazis, and they created a number of safe houses to hide Jews and other refugees.

The work was supported financially with contributions from Quakers, the Salvation Army, the Congregational Church in the US, the pacifist movement Fellowship of Reconciliation, Jewish and Christian groups, the French Protestant student organisation Cimade and Help to Children, based in Switzerland. This support helped to house and buy food for refugees. Many refugees escapes to Switzerland on an underground railroad network, many were placed in family homes and children were enrolled in schools using false names.

When the Vichy puppet regime demanded a list of all the Jews in the town, Trocmé refused to accept their definitions and told them: ‘These people came here for help and for shelter. I am their shepherd. A shepherd does not forsake his flock … I do not know what a Jew is. I know only human beings.’

Anti-Jewish Vichy security agents were sent to search in the town, but most of their efforts were without success. One arrest by the Gestapo led to the death of several young Jewish men in deportation camps. Daniel Trocmé (1910-1944), the director of their residence, La Maison des Roches, was André Trocmé’s second cousin. He refused to let the young adults put in his care to be sent away without him. He was arrested and later murdered in the Majdanek concentration camp.

When Georges Lamirand, a minister in the Vichy government, visited Le Chambon on 15 August 1942, Trocmé forcibly told him of his views and beliefs. Days later, Vichy gendarmes were sent to the town to locate ‘illegal’ aliens. In the face of rumours that Trocmé was about to be arrested, he urged his parishioners to ‘do the will of God, not of men.’ He quoted Deuteronomy 19: 2-10, which speaks of the entitlement of the persecuted to shelter, ‘so that the blood of an innocent person may not be shed in the land.’ The gendarmes were unsuccessful and left the town.

Trocmé was arrested in February 1943, along with Edouard Theis and the school headmaster Roger Darcissac, and they were sent to Saint-Paul d’Eyjeaux, near Limoges. They were released after four weeks and pressed to sign a commitment to obey all government orders. Although Trocmé and Theis refused, they were released and went underground. Trocmé continued to run the rescue and sanctuary efforts with the help of many friends and supporters.

After World War II, André and Magda were co-secretaries of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation in Europe. During the Algerian War, they set up the group Eirene in Morocco, with the aid of the Mennonites, to help French conscientious objectors. They advocated for Algerian independence, demonstrated against nuclear weapons and campaigned for drafting a world constitution.

André Trocmé spent his final years as a Reformed Church pastor in Geneva, and died there on 5 June 1971; Magda died in Paris on 10 October 1996. They are buried together in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

Months before he died, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem, recognised André Trocmé as Righteous among the Nations. His cousin Daniel Trocmé was recognised in March 1944, and Magda was recognised in July 1986.

The Plateau Vivarais-Lignon and Le Chambon-sur-Lignon have become a symbol of the rescue of Jews in France during World War II. Yad Vashem honoured the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the neighbouring communities with an engraved stele in the memorial park. It was the second time Yad Vashem honoured a whole community, the first time being the Dutch village of Nieuwlande in 1988.

Muriel Rosenberg, in her book Mais combien étaient-ils? (2021), estimates that between 1940 and 1945, at least 2,000 Jewish refugees, including many children, were saved by the small village of Le Chambon and the communities on the surrounding plateau because the people resisted the demands of the Vichy and Nazi police and military.

Their contemporaries included the Revd Jacques Martin (1906-2001), a French pastor, pacifist and conscientious objector whose involvement in the Resistance and the protection of Jews brought him recognition from Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Baron Roland de Pury (1907-1979), a Swiss Protestant theologian, pastor and writer who lived in France during World War II, helped Jewish refugees to escape to Switzerland, and was arrested by the Gestapo. He too was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

The French theologian Madeleine Barot (1909-1995) was active in the Resistance, in human rights movement, and the early work of the World Council of Churches. She too was given the status of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Marie Elmes (1908-2002) from Cork, who worked with American Friends Service Committee in Perpignan during world War II, saved the lives of 200 Jewish children in Vichy France, hiding them in the boot of her car. She is the first Irish person honoured as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

A plaque in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon commemorates the rescue of Jews by Magda and André Trocmé (Photograph: Pensées de Pascal / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Mark 7: 31-37 (NRSVA):

31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’

A memorial at Yad Vashem recalls the extraordinary story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon

Today’s Prayers (Friday 9 February 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Gender Justice in Christ.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Ellen McMibanga, Zambia Anglican Council Outreach Programme.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (9 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:

Help us O Lord to ensure that we treat everyone we encounter with respect and love.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have created the heavens and the earth
and made us in your own image:
teach us to discern your hand in all your works
and your likeness in all your children;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who with you and the Holy Spirit reigns supreme over all things,
now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God our creator,
by your gift
the tree of life was set at the heart of the earthly paradise,
and the bread of life at the heart of your Church:
may we who have been nourished at your table on earth
be transformed by the glory of the Saviour’s cross
and enjoy the delights of eternity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
give us reverence for all creation
and respect for every person,
that we may mirror your likeness
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection (Simon Weil, 1909-1943)

Continued Tomorrow (Thomas Merton, 1915-1968)

The Mary Elmes Bridge … the centrepiece is designed to create the impression of a menorah (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (128) 3 October 2023

Saint Michael’s Church, the former ‘English Church’ in Portarlington, Co Laois … built in 1694-1696 and rebuilt in 1830 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 1 October 2023). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today recalls the life and ministry of George Bell (1958), Bishop of Chichester, Ecumenist and Peacemaker.

Two of us returned from York overnight after our short weekend break, arriving back in Stony Stratford early this morning. Before today begins, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection.

The Church celebrated Saint Michael and All Angels last week (Friday, 29 September). So my reflections each morning during Michaelmas last week and this week are taking this format:

1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Saint Michael’s Church was built to serve the English-speaking families in late 17th century Portarlington (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michael’s Church (‘English Church’), Portarlington, Co Laois:

Saint Michael’s Church, a former Church of Ireland parish church in Portarlington, Co Laois, was once known as the ‘English Church.’ It stands on the east side Market Square, beside the dilapidated former Savoy Cinema, almost hidden behind the former Market House, and diagonally opposite Saint Paul’s, the ‘French Church,’ on the corner of the Square and the town’s main street, French Church Street.

It may seem strange that when Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, built his new town of Portarlington on the banks of the River Barrow in 1666, he provided no parish church for the new town.

A small part of the town was in the parish of Clonehorke, King’s County (Offaly), but it was mainly in the parish of Lea, Queen’s County (Laois). The nearest parish church was then in the neighbouring village of Lea, near Lea Castle and 3 km outside Portarlington.

Portarlington straddles the border between Co Laois and Co Offaly. However, the colony founded by Bennet was an economic and political failure, and he sold off his Irish estates before he died in 1685.

But new life came to Portarlington in the 1690s in the wake of the Williamite Wars. The Portarlington estates were confiscated from Sir Patrick Trant, a Jacobite, and granted to Henri de Massue (1648-1720), Marquis de Ruvigny and Earl of Galway.

Henri de Massue was a Huguenot and a former courtier in Versailles who had fled France as a religious refugee after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He invited other Huguenot refugees to settle on his new estate from 1692.

Lord Galway realised that the parish church in Lea was too far away and that his expanding town needed new places, he set about building not just one but two new churches in Portarlington.

Two churches and two schools were established: one of each for the French-speaking and English-speaking residents. But until the 19th century they remained, officially, chapels of ease to the original parish church 3 km outside Portarlington in the village of Lea.

Samuel Lewis, in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), noted that the two churches built in Portarlington during the reign of William III were dedicated to Saint Michael and Saint Paul. They were endowed with a rent-charge of £40 late on lands in the area.

Saint Michael’s Church was for the English-speaking families and Saint Paul’s Church was to serve the French and Flemish families; in time, they became known as the ‘English Church’ and the ‘French Church.’

The income of the French Church was augmented with an annual grant of £50 voted by Parliament, while the former Board of First Fruits increased the stipend of the minister of the English Church to £100 per annum.

Portarlington is in the Diocese of Kildare and both churches were in the patronage of the Bishop of Kildare.

The English church, on the east side of the Square, was rebuilt in the late Georgian style ca 1830. Seven years later, Samuel Lewis noted in 1837 that the English Church ‘has a handsome spire.’

Technically, the parish church in Lea remained the Church of Ireland parish in the area, even after it was rebuilt ca 1810. In 1869, the French Church became the parish church in Portarlington in place of the English Church.

However, the perpetual curate since 1838, John Worsley, who was also Dean of Kildare, kept the English Church open, and the two churches maintained separate parochial lives until 1887, when the church schools closed and the two churches were amalgamated.

The English Church was then deconsecrated, and the spire was eventually removed in 1924. The former church is now used as community hall.

The former church has a round-headed door opening with replacement timber panelled door, put in place ca 1980, with an over-panel. Inside, the ceiling has a decorative plaster rosette and the chancel has a decorative plaster arch.

The building has coursed rubble limestone walls with an ashlar plinth, quoins, stringcourse and coping. The round-headed windows have limestone sills, limestone voussoirs and replacement metal-framed casement windows that date from ca 1940.

Lea Parish Church, 3 km outside Portarlington, remains open, but is only used from Easter until October, and then with a twice-monthly service.

Saint Michael’s is also the name of the Roman Catholic parish church at the west end of Portarlington, on the Offaly side of the River Barrow.

The ‘English Church’ is now used as a community hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 9: 51-56 (NRSVA):

51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. 54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 Then they went on to another village.’

Saint Paul’s Church, the ‘French Church’ in Portarlington, Co Laois … built in 1694-1696 and rebuilt in 1851 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Supporting Justice for Women in Zambia.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (3 October 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

Let us pray for the Anglican Church in Zambia and the Zambia Anglican Council.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord, we pray that your grace
may always precede and follow us,
and make us continually to be given to all good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Saint Paul’s was built to serve the French-speaking and Flemish families of Huguenot refugees in Portarlington (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The ‘French Church’ became the parish church in Portarlington in 1869 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Sandy’s Row Synagogue has survived changes in the East End and thrives

Sandy’s Row Synagogue is the oldest surviving Ashkenazi synagogue in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

A few minutes’ walk away from Liverpool Street Station and bustling Bishopsgate, with its towering glass towers of finance, Sandy’s Row Synagogue is the oldest surviving Ashkenazi synagogue in London and the last Ashkenazi synagogue still functioning in Spitalfields.

This is a small, historic Ashkenazi shul on a quiet street, but it is still a thriving synagogue. Unlike other shuls in the old Jewish East End that have been lost due because of a dwindling resident Jewish population, Sandy’s Row synagogue is experiencing an upsurge in membership.

The site of Sandy’s Row Synagogue was once open-land called Old Artillery Gardens, next to the pasture-land of Spitalfields or ‘Spital Fyeld’s.’ It is named after Henry VIII’s royal artillery, the ‘Gunners of the Tower,’ who used the open space to experiment with artillery in the 16th century.

George Bradbury and Edward Noell bought the Old Artillery Ground for £5,700 in 1681, with a licence to build new houses on the Old Artillery Garden. A wooden chapel was built on this site and was used by French Huguenots.

The synagogue on Sandy’s Row (right) was first built as a Huguenot chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Artillery Church, L’Eglise de l’Artillerie, was built as a brick building on the site in 1766, and is the same building that stands today. The Artillery Church merged with the London Walloon Church in 1786, and for the next 50 years the church was used by various Christian groups, including the Universalist Baptists, Unitarians and the Scottish Baptists, before becoming Salem Chapel and then Parliament Court Chapel.

Dutch Ashkenazi Jewish migrants mainly from Amsterdam began arriving in Sptialfields in the 1840s. These Dutch Jews, who were economic migrants rather than refugees, settled in a small quarter of narrow streets in West Spitalfields known as the Tenterground. This was originally open land named after the ‘tenters’ or wooden frames used by weavers and fullers for drying and stretching cloth.

The ‘Tenter’ area included White’s Row, Tenter Street, Artillery Passage and Sandy’s Row. The Dutch Jews occupied this narrow maze of and continued to practise the trades they brought with them from Holland, such as cigar making, diamond cutting and slipper and cap making. Many small workshops were established in the area and businesses passed from generation to generation in families.

The name of the the Society of Loving Kindness and Truth is still remembered on the synagogue notice boards (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The Dutch Jewish community included about 1,000 people. Their customs and practises were different from other Ashkenazi Jewish groups. They were known locally as the Chuts and refused to join other existing synagogues. Instead, they rented a small room in a building on White’s Row, close to Sandy’s Row, where they held daily prayer meetings and Shabbat services. Festival services took place in a larger Zetland Hall in Maunsell Street.

In 1854, 50 Dutch Jewish families from this community formed a Hebra or friendly society, the Hevrat Menahem Avalim Hesed v’Emeth or the Society for Comfort of the Mourners, Kindness, and Truth. Originally this was a mutual aid and burial society, but as the community expanded its functions expanded and the society began fundraising.

Enough funds had been collected by 1867 to buy the lease on the chapel in Sandy’s Row that the society had been renting for some time. By then, the building was known as the Parliament Court Synagogue. The society raised a mortgage of £700 on the building that was finally paid off in 1929.

Inside Sandy’s Row Synagogue (Photograph © Sandy’s Row Synagogue)

Nathan Solomon Joseph, one of the best-known synagogue architects of the time, was commissioned to remodel the former chapel. He kept many of the original features of the Georgian interior, including the roof and the balcony, which became the women’s gallery.

The original entrance to the chapel was in a tiny alley, Parliament Court, that now runs along the back of the synagogue.

Because Jews pray in the direction of Jerusalem, which in London is to the south-east, the original entrance to the building was bricked up and the Aron haKodesh or Holy Ark for the Torah scrolls was placed on the south-east wall. A new front door was inserted on the north-west of the building, opening onto Sandy’s Row.

The interior design was based on the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place, long since demolished. This included a coved ceiling, cornice, clerestory windows and a neo-classical mahogany Torah Ark set into an apse.

Much of the interior is unaltered since it was built in the 19th century, apart from the pine pews and the wood pine panelling, which covers much of the interior walls. These were added in the 1950s.

The Chief Rabbi of London, Nathan Marcus Adler, refused to consecrate the synagogue because he opposed setting up small, independent congregation so close to the large established City synagogues. Instead, Sandy’s Row Synagogue was consecrated in 1870 by the Haham or head rabbi of the London’s Spanish and Portuguese Jews Congregation at Bevis Marks Synagogue, Rabbi Benjamin Artom.

Sandy’s Row Synagogue is the last Ashkenazi synagogue still functioning in Spitalfields (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

By November 1887, Sandy’s Row Synagogue was the largest of the East End congregations that founded the Federation of Synagogues. It left the Federation in 1899 and was refurbished for the 50th anniversary of the community after acquiring its freehold, becoming an Associate of the United Synagogue in 1922.

In all this time, Sandy’s Row has remained independent apart from a brief period during World War II when it belonged to the United Synagogues to facilitate the number of burials needed in the area due because of the bombing raids during the Blitz. The synagogue was not directly hit, but shock waves from bombing nearby damaged the structure of the building.

The synagogue returned to its independent status in 1949 and flourished in the 1950s. On Shabbat, 100 to 200 people were present, and on the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when no seats were available, people sat on the floor in the aisles.

For many years, it also hosted the secretariat of the Stepney and Whitechapel Street Traders’ Association, representing market traders in the Petticoat Lane and Whitechapel Markets.

However, the synagogue was in decline by the 1970s. Most of the Jewish population had moved out of the East End and membership dwindled. When Stella and Jimmy Wilder, who had run Sandy’s Row, died in the late 1980s, many feared that it would go the same way as most of the 150 shuls that had once been in the East End.

The survival of Sandy’s Row Synagogue may be a lesson for other synagogues in the City and the East End (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The synagogue struggled to muster a minyan in the 1990s and came close to closing down. The remaining members formed a board of management and membership is slowly increasing once again, with a new Jewish generation moving back into the East End.

The current membership of Sandys Row Synagogue is around 200 and expanding due to a new influx of younger members moving into the area after a long period of decline. The president is Harvey Rifkind.

Mincha or afternoon services take place every weekday except Friday. Shabbat services are held fortnightly, led by Rabbi Mendy Korer of Chabad. In recent years, there have been five weddings and two bar mitzvahs at the synagogue.

The Jewish Chronicle suggested last year that if Sandy’s Row can survive and thrive, there are lessons for other synagogues with similar profiles – at risk, historic, small shuls within neighbourhoods that were formerly inhabited by a much larger Jewish population than exists today.

Going beyond the drama in search of the ‘real East End’

Brick Lane in the heart of the East End (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

For many years I have been a fan of EastEnders. I remember many of the original characters, I remember Den and Angie, and I even remember when Ian Beale was a boy.

I know it’s not to everyone’s taste, but it’s the only soap I watch on television, four times a week – Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays – and I prefer to watch it on the BBC, without interruption.

Sometimes, the melodramatics – pubs being burned down, people being kidnapped, thrown off bridges or tops of buildings, murders in the woods – and sometimes the avoidance of the real political issues of the day, such as Brexit, take away from the real drama on EastEnders that offers a slice of life in London today.

Commercial Tavern on Commercial Road … a typical East End pub? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Although EastEnders avoided the ‘Brexit’ debate, over the years it has dealt with a variety of issues: anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, sharp business practices, alcoholism, substance abuse, suicide, class division, domestic abuse, marital fidelity, relationships, elder abuse, sexuality, knife crime, abortion, loneliness …

Even Dot Cotton’s habit of quoting random verses of Scripture, often out of context, or its stereotypical ‘more tea’ vicars who seem to pop up only for the ‘hatch, match and dispatch’ moments of Baptisms, Weddings and Funerals, invite discussion about the relevance of Christian faith in the world today.

Whitechapel Bell Foundry, founded in 1570, the oldest registered company in England, closed in 2017 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

It is easy to criticise EastEnders for presenting an East End that is long gone but idealised by the children and grandchildren of East Enders who were moved out to Essex shortly before or after World War II.

It is similar to the criticism of Coronation Street for its portrayal of the North of England, or the critics of Emmerdale who insist that England is no longer the ‘green and pleasant land’ of William Blake’s Jerusalem.

Of course, Blake is saying that England is more like ‘these dark satanic mills’ than a ‘green and pleasant’ land. These critics ignore how poetry, song and drama have a different way of presenting reality. And with its dialogue, sets, characters and storylines, EastEnders is in the tradition of classical English drama.

Spitalfields Market … there has been a market on the site since 1638 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Finding something new

I often pass through the East End as I take the train from Stansted Airport to Liverpool Street station, on my way to Southwark and meetings of the trustees of the mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

The City of London spread out around Liverpool Street and Saint Paul’s Cathedral. As the docks of the old East End closed and as old communities have been rehoused in Essex and Hertfordshire, the City has started to intrude into areas that once would never have been seen as fashionable and desirable.

But how many people who work in the world of capital, investment and finance know the real East End for themselves?

On some recent visits, I have taken the opportunity to stroll through different parts of the East End, and to ask whether the life and diversity found in places such as Mile End, Brick Lane, Commercial Road, Cable Street and Whitechapel are truly reflected in EastEnders.

Bevis Marks Synagogue is the oldest continuously operating synagogue in Europe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Where is the East End?

The East End developed east of the Roman and mediaeval walls of the City of London, and north of the River Thames. It has no generally accepted boundaries and parts of it now lie within Central London.

Of course, it is difficult to define the borders of Central London too. But the East End includes Spitalfields, Shoreditch, Bishopsgate, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets, parts of Hackney, Stepney and Mile End.

The East End began to emerge in the Middle Ages but really developed from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when London was seen as having four parts: the City of London, Westminster, Southwark and those areas beyond the Tower of London. Eventually, the East End spread east of the River Lea and into Essex.

The East End was known for its poverty, overcrowding and social problems, which motivated both political activists and social reformers.

But alongside these social and economic problems, the East End has also been associated with migration, beginning with Sephardic Jews and Huguenot refugees. They were quickly followed by successive generations of Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews, and, in the 20th century, families from Bangladesh.

When the Sephardic Jews arrived in London from Amsterdam in the late 17th century, they were the descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity or persecuted by the Inquisition. They built the Bevis Marks Synagogue which remains the oldest continuously operating synagogue in Europe.

Huguenot houses built on Fournier Street in the 1720s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Huguenot refugees who arrived in the 17th century created a new area in Spitalfields. But the Huguenot weavers and the Irish weavers often found themselves in contact with each other.

The Spitalfield Riots were put down with brutal force and ended with two men being hanged publicly in front of the Salmon and Ball, a public house at Bethnal Green: John Valline, who was from a Huguenot family, and John Doyle, an Irish weaver.

Thomas John Barnardo, born in Dublin in 1845, opened his first children’s home in 1868 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Social reformers, slum priests

The East End has also been associated with generations of social reformers, often motivated by their religious faith. The beginnings of the Salvation Army can be traced to William Booth preaching in a tent in Whitechapel in 1866, and Thomas John Barnardo, a Dublin-born doctor, set up his ‘ragged schools’ in the East End around the same time.

Toynbee Hall, founded in 1884, provided a springboard for social reformers. It was associated with people like RH Tawney, Clement Atlee and gave rise the Workers’ Educational Association, and later the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and the Child Poverty Action Group.

The ‘slum priest’ tradition was continued at Saint Botolph without Aldgate by Kenneth Leech (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The work of the philanthropist Angela Burdett Coutts in the East End, including Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, led to formation of the first societies for the prevention of cruelty to children.

It was the home of the great Anglo-Catholic slum priests in the Victorian Church of England and later of activists and priests like the Revd Kenneth Leech, who died five years ago.

Radicals and anarchists commemorated in a mural in Angel Alley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Political activism and street battles

At the beginning of the 20th century, the East End also attracted socialist, communist and anarchist revolutionaries, including Kropotkin, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, as well as Maxim Gorky and Rosa Luxemburg.

Here Emily Pankhurst first campaigned for women’s votes.

Dublin-born Max Levitas was one of the heroes of the Battle of Cable Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Battle of Cable Street took place in in the East End on Sunday 4 October 1936. When Oswald Mosley and his Fascists tried to march through the East End, the police were sent in to protect the marchers rather than the Jewish people and local communities in the East End.

A petition supported by 100,000 local people was rebuffed by the Home Secretary, John Simon. When 20,000 anti-fascist demonstrators turned out, they were confronted by 2,000-3,000 fascists marchers protected by 6,000 police.

The heroes of the Battle of Cable Street, in eyes of many East Enders, included Dublin-born Max Levitas, later a councillor in Stepney for 15 years. He was still politically active when he died at the age of 103 on 2 November 2018.

11, A sign on Whitechapel Road recalls the ‘Jewish Daily Post’ … a short-lived Yiddish language newspaper (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Pluralism and diversity

In many ways, the story of the changing nature of religious pluralism and cultural diversity in the East End is told in the changes that transformed a Huguenot chapel into a synagogue before it became Brick Lane Mosque.

Brick Lane Mosque stands on the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane, just a short walk from Whitechapel station. High above the separate entrances for men and women to the mosque, a stone sundial is carved with the Latin words Umbra Sumus, ‘We are shadows.’

Brick Lane Mosque has been a Huguenot church, a Methodist chapel, a mission hall and Spitalfields Great Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

These words and the date 1743 above reflect the long history of a building that has stood in the heart of the East End for almost 250 years. It has been a centre of worship for successive generations of immigrants who have made the East End their home. Over time, it has been a Huguenot church, an evangelical mission hall, a Methodist chapel, a synagogue and a mosque.

It was originally built as a church by French Huguenots who settled in the Spitalfields area, having fled religious persecution in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

It was built in 1743 as La Neuve Eglise or the ‘New Church’ by Huguenots. At the same time, the Church of England built Christ Church, Spitalfields, at the other end of Fournier Street.

Christ Church, Spitalfields, at the other end of Fournier Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Huguenot chapel on Brick Lane survived for more than six decades. But when weaving declined with industrialisation in the north of England, these Huguenots moved on and their church on Brick Lane fell out of use.

It was bought in 1809 by the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, now known as the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People. But this mission hall lasted only 10 years, and from 1819 it was a Methodist chapel.

Later, it became the main synagogue of a new Jewish community that started to arrive in this part of the East End from the mid-19th century on.

From the 1880s into the early 20th century, massive pogroms and the May Laws in Russia forced many Jews to flee the Tsarist Empire and parts of Central Europe, and about 140,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Britain.

The former Huguenot church at 59 Brick Lane was acquired by a Jewish immigrant community in 1898 and was known as the Spitalfields Great Synagogue.

The East London Mosque stands on the site of Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

But over the years, the Jewish population in the East End declined, with many people moving to other parts of East London and to suburbs in North London. The synagogue in Brick Lane closed in 1973 and a successor congregation opened in Golders Green. Only four of the 150 synagogues that were built in Tower Hamlets remain today.

Meanwhile, the Bengali community in Tower Hamlets was growing rapidly in the second half of the 20th century and it now makes up 32 per cent of the total population of Tower Hamlets. The Brick Lane Synagogue was sold in 1975 and was transformed into a mosque, reopening in 1976 as the London Great Mosque.

It is now known as the Brick Lane Mosque. It is used primarily by the large Bengali community in the East End and can hold up to 3,200 people.

The Synagogue of the Congregation of Jacob is one of five remaining synagogues in the East End (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Continuing poverty

The East End has given us the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, Fish and Chips, the Cockney dialect, ‘rhyming slang’ and the Pearly Kings and Queens among the fruit and vegetable stallholders on the streets and in the markets of the East End.

The closure of the last of the East End docks in 1980 created further challenges and led to attempts at regeneration at the London Docks and Canary Wharf, and the Olympic Parks means the East End is going through further change.

Sadly, to this day, however, some parts of the East End continue to live with some of the worst poverty in Britain.

East End culture includes fish and chips and rhyming slang (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

This feature was first published in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) in March 2020.

Brick Lane Synagogue is a reminder of a once vibrant East End community

Brick Lane Synagogue, also known as Spitalfields Great Synagogue, opened in 1898 in a former Huguenot church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

During this week’s visit to London for the launch of resources for Holocaust Memorial Day, I also visited one synagogue (Bevis Marks Synagogue) and the site of two former synagogues in the East End, Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue and Brick Lane Synagogue.

The former Brick Lane Synagogue, now the Brick Lane Mosque, is a prominent, Grade II* listed building on the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane, just a short walk from Whitechapel station.

High above the separate entrances for men and women to the mosque, a stone sundial is carved with the Latin words Umbra Sumus, ‘We are shadows.’

These words and the date above them reflect the long history of a building that has stood on the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane for almost 250 years. It has been a centre of worship successive waves of immigrants over the centuries who have made the East End and London a colourful place of diversity and pluralism.

This building has been a Huguenot church, an evangelical mission hall, a Methodist chapel, and a Jewish synagogue before becoming today’s mosque.

The building was originally built in 1743 as a church by French Huguenots who settled in the Spitalfields area, having fled religious persecution in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685.

Many Huguenots moved into the Brick Lane area, where a thriving weaving industry developed. The building was erected in 1743 as La Neuve Eglise or the ‘New Church’ by the Huguenot community. The church was designed by the architect Thomas Stibbs (d. 1759).

The Latin inscription on the sundial, Umbra Sis umus, a quotation from an ode by Horace (4.7), meaning ‘We are a shadow.’

The full stanza poses a contrast between the moon’s renewal and our own mortality:

Damna tamen celeres reparant caelestia lunae; Nos ubi decidimus, Quo pater Aeneas, quo dives Tullus et Ancus, Pulvis et umbra sumus.

The moons, however, quickly repair their heavenly losses; when we have fallen to where father Aeneas fell, and wealthy Tullus and Ancus, we are dust and shadow.

The sundial on the side of the former synagogue dates from 1743 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Meanwhile, the Church of England built Christ Church, Spitalfields, on Fournier Street, designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor.

The Huguenot chapel on Brick Lane survived for more than six decades. But when weaving declined with industrialisation in the north of England, these Huguenots moved west, becoming part of the larger French-speaking population in Kensington, Chelsea, Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, and the Huguenot church on Brick Lane fell out of use.

The building on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street was bought in 1809 by the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews, now known as the Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People. But this mission chapel lasted only 10 years, and from 1819 the building was a Methodist chapel.

In an ironic twist of history, the former church that had been used as a mission hall by a society seeking to convert Jews soon became the main synagogue of a new Jewish community that started to arrive in this part of the East End from the mid-19th century on.

From the 1880s into the early 20th century, massive pogroms and the May Laws in Russia forced many Jews to flee the Tsarist Empire and parts of Central Europe, and about 140,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Britain.

The former Huguenot church at 59 Brick Lane was acquired by a Jewish immigrant community in 1898 and became the Machzike Hadath (‘Upholders of the Faith’) or Machzike Adass Synagogue, and was also known as the Spitalfields Great Synagogue.

The community previously had a smaller synagogue at Booth Street, Spitalfields. The former Booth Street is now the east section of Princelet Street. Nearby synagogues included the Great Synagogue of London and another church building that had become a Jewish place of worship, the Sandys Row Synagogue.

Machzike Hadath was formed as a society by individual members of the North London Beth Hamedrash and the Machzike Shomrei Shabbat Synagogue of Booth Street. The Machzike Shomrei Shabbat Synagogue formally joined the society in February 1893, and adopted the name of the Machzike Hadath Synagogue.

It is this ultra-orthodox community that moved to the former church in Brick Lane in 1898, and transformed it into Brick Lane Synagogue or Spitalfields Great Synagogue.

With services almost around the clock, the congregation was renowned for its piety and strict adherence to orthodoxy. There was a Talmud Torah school next door on Brick Lane, attended by over 500 boys. From 1916, the synagogue’s leader was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, later the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of British Palestine.

The name Machzikei Hadass (מחזיקי הדת, ‘those who reinforce the Law’) comes from a 19th century organisation of synagogues and yeshivas in East Europe that aimed to improve Jewish education and observance. It was also used in Dublin by the community that had a small synagogue on Saint Kevin’s Parade, off Clanbrassil Street, from 1883 and that moved to Rathmore Villas, Terenure, in 1968. The Machzikei Hadass movement owes its origins and traditions to the teaching of the Chatam Sofer.

Over the years, the population of Jews in the East End declined, with many people moving to other parts of East London, and to suburbs in North London. By the 1970s, the congregation had dwindled. The synagogue in Brick Lane closed in 1973 and a successor congregation opened in Golders Green in north-west London, Machzike Hadath.

Meanwhile, the Bengali community in Tower Hamlets was growing rapidly in the second half of the 20th century and it now makes up 32 per cent of the total population of Tower Hamlets. The Brick Lane Synagogue was sold in 1975 and was transformed into a mosque, reopening in 1976 as the London Jamme Masjid or the London Great Mosque.

It is now known as the Brick Lane Mosque. It is used primarily by the large Bengali community in the East End and can hold up to 3,200 people.

Brick Lane, once an arterial hub in the Jewish East End, extends from Swanfield Street in Bethnal Green, crosses Bethnal Green Road and continues one-third of a mile south through Spitalfields to Wentworth Street. Brick Lane’s continuation to the south, Osborn Street, is about 400 ft long and leads into Whitechapel High Street.

Brick Lane is still a vibrant, populated place, but most of the Jewish community is long gone, and only four of the 150 synagogues that were built in Tower Hamlets remain today. The Jewish Chronicle reported recently (27 September 2019) that the only Jewish retailer remaining on Brick Lane is Leo Epstein, who is 86 and still selling dress fabrics.

The Epstein family now lives in Hendon, in north-west London, and family members criss-cross London from one end to the other each day to reach their shop. Epra Fabrics is sandwiched between a Bangladeshi restaurant and an empty space with a ‘For Let’ sign.

Rents are rising on Brick Lane as the area becomes increasingly fashionable. Vegan cafés and vintage clothing shops sit in between the Bangladeshi restaurants. But Epra Fabrics remains, despite the persistent flurry of change and development which surrounds it.

Leo Epstein came to England at the age of six, as a refugee from Germany. He told the Jewish Chronicle: ‘Because I was a refugee, I have this positive view of England, which has always been welcoming, to not only Jews, but to other refugees. You see that every day lived out here on Brick Lane. I will admit, though, that it is worrying, what is happening in the world today.’

Brick Lane is becoming increasingly fashionable, with vegan cafés and vintage clothing shops sit in between the Bangladeshi restaurants (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Updated 6 March 2020 with photograph of sundial