Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, a Palladian Revival church, stands at a crossroads in radical architectural change

Saint Giles Day is being celebrated in Saint Giles-in-the-Fields Church, London, today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

When I was in London a few days ago, one of the churches I visited was Saint Giles-in-the-Fields. Saint Giles Day was last Monday (1 September 2025), and I marked the day by posting photographs and memories of a half a dozen churches I know with his name. But Saint Giles Day is being celebrated in Saint Giles-in-the-Fields today, with Choral Holy Communion, sung by the Saint Giles Quartet (11 am) and Evensong sung by the Saint Giles Choir.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is the parish church of the St Giles area in the London Borough of Camden. St Giles is part of the West End, and much or all of St Giles usually is taken to be a part of Bloomsbury. The places of interest include Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, Seven Dials, the Phoenix Garden, and St Giles Circus.

St Giles Circus was the site of a gallows until the 15th century, the Great Plague in 1665 started in St Giles, and in the 18th and 19th centuries the Rookery was one of the worst slums in Britain, with a large Irish Catholic population that gave the area nicknames such as ‘Little Ireland’ and ‘The Holy Land’. St Giles Rookery and the Seven Dials were known for poverty and squalor and became centres for crime, prostitution, gambling houses and ‘gin palaces’, and ‘Saint Giles’ Greek’ was a secret language used by thieves and beggars.

Inside Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, London, facing east (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Church of Saint Giles-in-the-Fields gives its name to the surrounding district of St Giles, between Seven Dials, Bloomsbury, Holborn and Soho. But the church traces its story back to the chapel of a 12th-century monastery and leper hospital in the fields between Westminster and the City of London.

The present church is the third on the site since 1101 and was rebuilt in the Palladian style to designs by the architect Henry Flitcroft in 1731-1733.

The first recorded church on the site was a chapel of the Parish of Holborn attached to a monastery and leper hospital founded by Matilda of Scotland, the wife of Henry I, ca 1101-1109. It was later attached to the larger Hospital of the Lazar Brothers at Burton Lazars, Leicestershire.

When Saint Giles was founded, it stood outside the City of London, on the main road to Tyburn and Oxford. Between 1169 and 1189, Henry II granted the hospital the lands, gifts and privileges that secured its future.

Inside Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, London, looking towards the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The chapel probably began to function as the church of a hamlet that grew up around the hospital. The hospital buildings would have included the church, the Master’s House, and the ‘Spittle Houses’, and the Precinct of the Hospital may have included the whole of the island site now bounded by Saint Giles High Street, Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.

A Papal Bull in the 13th century confirmed the hospital’s privileges and granted it special protection. Edward I assigned it in 1299 to the Hospital of Burton Lazars, Leicestershire, a house of the order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. The warden of the hospital was answerable to the Master of Burton Lazars.

Richard II transferred the hospital, chapel and lands to the Cistercian abbey of Saint Mary de Graces by the Tower of London in 1391. But after a legal and sometimes violent dispute, the Cistercian ownership was revoked in 1402 and the hospital was returned to the Lazar Brothers.

Saint Giles Fields was at the centre of Sir John Oldcastle’s Lollard uprising in 1414. Many of the rebels were brutally executed and Oldcastle was hanged in chains and burnt ‘gallows and all’ in St Giles Fields on 14 December 1417.

The present church is the third on the site since 1101 and was rebuilt in the Palladian style to designs by the architect Henry Flitcroft in 1731-1733 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

At the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, Saint Giles Hospital and the Hospital of Burton St Lazar were dissolved in 1544, and all the hospital lands, rights and privileges, excluding the chapel, were granted to John Dudley, Lord Lisle, in 1548. The chapel survived as the local parish church, and when the first Rector of Saint Giles was appointed in 1547, the phrase ‘in the fields’ was added to the name to distinguish it from Saint Giles, Cripplegate.

Saint Giles was at the centre of the Babington Plot later in the 16th century. Pope Pius V issued a papal bull, Regnans in Excelsis, in 1570, giving licence to English Catholics to overthrow Elizabeth I. A group of recusants, secret Catholics and Jesuits drew up a plan in 1585 in the precincts of Saint Giles to murder Elizabeth I, invite a Spanish invasion of England, and place Mary Queen of Scots on the throne.

When the plot was exposed, the conspirators were returned to Saint Giles churchyard to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Ballard and Babington and others were executed on 20 September 1586; Mary Queen of Scots was executed on 8 February 1587.

The original churchyard and burying place is on the south side of the church on the site of the original burial yard of the Leper Hospital (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After parts of the mediaeval church collapsed in the 1610s, work on building a new church began in 1623. It was completed in 1630 and was consecrated by William Laud, Bishop of London, on 26 January 1630.

The Rector of Saint Giles, the Revd Roger Maynwaring, was fined and deprived of his clerical functions by Parliament in 1628 after two sermons advocating the divine right of kings and he was accused of challenging the rights of Parliament.

When Archbishop Laud’s former chaplain, William Heywood, became the rector in 1638, he began to transform Saint Giles in the High Church, Laudian fashion. Puritan parishioners presented a petition to parliament accusing Heywood of ‘popish reliques’ and said he had introduced ‘at needless expense to the parish’, including an elaborate carved oak screen and expensive altar rails.

Heywood was still the rector when the English Civil War began in 1642, and most of the ornaments his ornamentation was stripped out and sold off in 1643. After Charles I was executed, Heywood fled London and lived in Wiltshire.

One of the few surviving chest tombs in Saint Giles Churchyard is the tomb of Richard Penderel, who sheltered King Charles II after the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

John Sharp introduced a weekly Holy Communion and restored the Daily Offices (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Puritan ministers were ejected from Saint Giles at the Restoration in 1660, and Heywood was re-instated. He was succeeded in 1663 by Dr Robert Boreman, another deprived Royalist, who is remembered for his bitter exchange with Richard Baxter, a leading Puritan and occasional parishioner of Saint Giles.

A number of Roman Catholic priests and laymen, executed for High Treason during the Titus Oates plot in 1681 were buried near the church’s north wall, including Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh, although his head is now in Drogheda and his body is at Downside Abbey, Somerset. All 12 were beatified by Pope Pius XI and Oliver Plunkett was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1975.

Meanwhile, John Sharp, who became the rector in 1675, was seen as bridging the post-restoration divisions within the Church of England. He spent 16 years reforming and reconstituting the parish, preached twice on Sundays, introduced a weekly Holy Communion and restored the Daily Offices in the church. After the Williamite Revolution, Sharp became the Dean of Canterbury in 1689, and Archbishop of York in 1691.

Henry Flitcroft’s spire was modelled on the steeple by James Gibbs at Saint Martin’s in the Fields (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The high number of plague burials in and around the church may have caused the damp problems that emerged in the church by 1711, and the churchyard had risen as much as eight feet above the nave floor.

The parishioners petitioned the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches for a grant to rebuild the church. A new church was built in 1730-1734, and was designed by the architect Henry Flitcroft in the Palladian style. The first stone was laid by the Bishop of Norwich, William Baker, a former rector, on Michaelmas, 29 September 1731.

Flitcroft was inspired by the Caroline buildings of Inigo Jones rather than the works of Wren, Hawksmoor or James Gibbs, although his spire was modelled on the steeple by James Gibbs at Saint Martin’s in the Fields.

The mosaic ‘Time, Death and Judgment’ by GF Watts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Flitcroft’s church represents a shift from the Baroque to the Palladian form in church architecture in England. It has been described as ‘one of the least known but most significant episodes in Georgian church design, standing at a crucial crossroads of radical architectural change and representing … the first Palladian Revival church to be erected in London.’ The Vestry House was built at the same time.

The East Window depicts the Transfiguration. The paintings of Moses and Aaron on either side of the altar are by Francisco Vieira the Younger, court painter to the King of Portugal.

The mosaic ‘Time, Death and Judgment’ by GF Watts was formerly in Saint Jude’s Church, Whitechapel. The cartoon for it was drawn by Cecil Schott and the mosaic was executed by Salviati.

The children of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron were bapised in the baptismal font (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The baptismal font, dating from 1810, is of white marble with Greek Revival details and is said to have been designed by Sir John Soane. William and Clara Everina Shelley, the children of the novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley, were baptised in the font on 9 March 1818, along with Allegra, the illegitimate daughter of Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont and the poet Lord Byron.

The haste in baptising these children is attributed to Shelley’s debts, his ill-health and his fears about the custody of his children, along with the desire to take Allegra to her father who was then in Venice. All three children were to die in childhood in Italy.

John Wesley is said to have preached occasionally at Evening Prayer in Saint Giles. In the east end of the north aisle is a small box pulpit from a chapel where both John and Charles Wesley preached. George Whitfield and John William Fletcher also preached from the same pulpit. The chapel later became All Saints’ Church, West Street, and when it closed the pulpit was moved to Saint Giles.

The Resurrection Gate at the west end of the churchyard was rebuilt to designs by William Leverton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Resurrection Gate at the west end of the churchyard facing Flitcroft Street is a grand lychgate in the Doric order. It once stood on the north side of the churchyard, where condemned prisoners would see it on their way to their execution at Tyburn. The gate is adorned with a bas-relief of the Day of Judgment, probably carved in 1686.

The gate was rebuilt in 1810 to designs by William Leverton. It was deemed unsafe in 1865, taken down and re-erected opposite the west door in anticipation of the re-routing of Charing Cross Road. But Charing Cross Road by-passed Flitcroft Street, and the gate now faces a narrow alley.

The Transfiguration depicted in the east window … most of the Victorian stained glass in Saint Giles was destroyed during World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As the population of the area grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, no more room was available for burials in the graveyard, and many parishioners, including the architect Sir John Soane, were buried in the churchyard at Saint Pancras Old Church.

The architects Sir Arthur Blomfield and William Butterfield made minor alterations to the interior of the church in 1875 and 1896.

Most of the Victorian stained glass in Saint Giles was destroyed during World War II and the roof of the nave was severely damaged. The Vestry House was filled with rubble, the churchyard was fenced with chicken wire, and the Rectory on Great Russell Street was destroyed.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields uses the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and the King James Bible, and the church is a corporate member of the Prayer Book Society (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Revd Gordon Taylor, who was appointed rector after the war, set about rebuilding the church and parish. The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 24 October 1951 and Gordon Taylor raised funds for a major restoration in 1952-1953, praised by Sir John Betjeman as ‘one of the most successful post-war church restorations’.

Taylor also rebuilt the congregation, refurbished the Saint Giles’s Almshouses and revived the ancient parochial charities. Despite the liturgical changes introduced in the 1960s, he maintained the use of the Book of Common Prayer.

George Chapman’s memorial was designed by Inigo Jones (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Giles is often known to as the ‘Poets’ Church’ because of its connections with several poets, dramatists, actors and translators, and the Poetry Society holds its annual general meeting in Saint Giles Vestry House.

An early post-reformation rector, Nathaniel Baxter, was a priest and poet, and was once a tutor to Sir Philip Sidney. He is the author of a lengthy philosophical poem ‘Sir Philip Sydney’s Ourania’ (1606).

Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, who was buried at Saint Giles in 1648, was a brother of the priest-poet George Herbert and was a poet too.

George Chapman (1559-1634) published the first complete English translation of the works of Homer, and is the subject of John Keats’s sonnet ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’. Inigo Jones designed his memorial.

James Shirley and Thomas Nabbes are both buried in the churchyard, and the politician, pamphleteer, poet and MP Andrew Marvell was buried at Saint Giles in 1678.

The translator Sir Roger L’Estrange, who produced the first English translation of Aesop’s fables for children is buried at Saint Giles. L’Estrange also discovered and foiled the Rye House Plot in 1683. John Milton’s daughter Mary was baptised in Saint Giles in 1647 and L’Estrange is often remembered for his attempt to suppress lines from Book I of John Milton’s Paradise Lost for potentially impugning the king:

As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs

The organ was rebuilt in 1699 by Christian Smith, a nephew of the organ builder ‘Father’ Smith (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The 17th century organ was destroyed in the English Civil War. George Dallam built a replacement in 1678, which was rebuilt in 1699 by Christian Smith, a nephew of the organ builder ‘Father’ Smith. A second rebuilding was completed in 1734 by Gerard Smith the younger. The organ was rebuilt in 1856 and in 1960, and it was extensively restored by William Drake in 2006.

People with memorials in Saint Giles include: Luke Hansard, printer to the House of Commons; Thomas Earnshaw, watchmaker; Cecil Calvert, the first proprietor of Maryland; William Balmain, one of the founders of New South Wales; and John Coleridge Patteson, first Anglican Bishop of Melanesia and martyred, who is commemorated in the Church of England on 20 September.

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is the custodian of the White Ensign flown by HMS Indefatigable at the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay 80 years ago, on 5 September 1945.

Saint Giles is the patron of beggars, so it is appropriate the mission of Saint Giles gives a priority to the destitute and the homeless, and the church works with many homeless charities.

The Simon Community provides a weekly Street Café outside the church every Saturday and Sunday. Quaker Homeless Action provide a lending library at Saint Giles every Saturday for people who otherwise would not have access to books.

The pulpit from which John and Charles Wesley once preached (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Giles-in-the-Fields is a parish church in the Diocese of London, and is served by three clergy members and a licensed lay minister: the Revd Tom Sander has been the rector since 2021; the Revd Chris Smalling is an associate priest; the Revd Philip Dawson has been the curate since 2023; and Will James is a licensed lay minister. Jonathan Bunney is the Director of Music.

The two Sunday services are Sung Eucharist at 11 am and Evensong at 6:30 pm. The church is open daily for quiet prayer, with Morning Prayer every morning at 8:15 am, and said Holy Communion on Wednesdays at 1 pm. Saint Giles uses the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and the King James Bible, and the church is a corporate member of the Prayer Book Society. On the first Sunday in the month, the extended form of Sung Eucharist includes sung responses, Creed and Gloria.

The patronal Feast of Saint Giles is celebrated on the nearest Sunday to 1 September, and this year the feast is being celebrated today (Sunday 7 September 2025).

The seal of the mediaeval hospital of Saint Giles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Two buildings side-by-side on Bird Street are part of the history of Lichfield’s libraries and museums

Lichfield Registration Office was built as the Free Library and Museum in 1856-1859 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

A good measure of a literary city and a cathedral city is whether it has a good library, a good museum and good bookshops.

Since my teens, I have valued the research and reading facilities at the library in Lichfield in its varied locations, first at the former Public Library and Art Gallery on Bird Street, later at the Friary, and more recently, since 2019, in the former Saint Mary’s Church, though with the sad and controversial loss of the Lichfield Record Office, established in 1959.

The original Library and Museum, bedside the Museum Gardens and Beacon Park on Bird Street in Lichfield, was built in 1857-1859 and designed in an Italianate style by the Wolverhampton architectural practice of Bidlake and Lovatt. It forms an interesting pair with the former Probate Court next door, and both face the Remembrance Garden on the other side of Bird Street and the causeway over Minster Pool.

Lichfield Cathedral has an important library that has been housed in the upper room of the Chapter House since 1758. But, until the mid-19th century, towns in England and Ireland did not have public libraries as we know them today.

Most libraries were attached to colleges or cathedrals or were in private stately homes. Commercial libraries were a response to the popularity of the rise of the novel in the 18th and 19th centuries, but libraries were still unknown to the working class, many of whom were uneducated and illiterate.

The Chartists, who demanded social and electoral reform and building land colonies, also set up reading rooms. By the mid-19th century, many clubs societies and institutes for working people provided lectures, libraries and book borrowing facilities, charging a nominal annual membership fee.

A Reading and Mutual Instruction Society was formed in Lichfield in 1850, and soon had over 100 members. That year, the Public Libraries Act was passed, allowing local councils to levy a halfpenny rate to fund local libraries and museums. One of the first of these was in Lichfield, where the Free Library and Museum opened in an elegant Italianate building on Bird Street in 1859.

The Reading and Mutual Instruction Society in Lichfield wound itself up and donated its books to the new library, giving everyone access to books. That year too saw the Museum Grounds open as a public park.

The architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner describes the library as ‘small, of yellow brick and funny.’ The library was built in 1857-1859 and was designed by the architectural practice of George Bidlake and Henry Lovatt, based in Wolverhampton.

Robert Bridgeman’s lone sailor on the former Free Library and Museum faces the gardens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The two-storey-over basement building was designed in the renaissance style with a right-angle plan with an inset octagonal entrance tower with a cupola. It is built in brick with buff brick façades, ashlar dressings, a parapeted roof, three-window and six-window ranges, blind arcading. The plinth has a square ashlar plaque inscribed: ‘Free Library and Museum’.

Other features include flanking roundels, lotus capitals, tympana with archivolts and keys, blind arcading, ashlar colonnettes, 20th century buttresses, and ashlar balustrading. Inside there is a geometrical stair with slender iron balusters and a wreathed handrail.

A stone statue of a lone sailor is a familiar site on the side of the building, with the name ‘HMS Powerful’ on his hat band. HMS Powerful was a Royal Navy cruiser launched in 1895, and it played an important role in delivering troops and guns for the relief of Ladysmith during the Boer War.

The lone sailor was originally intended for a Boer War memorial in York, but was later given to the City of Lichfield by Robert Bridgeman in 1901 and placed on the Free Library and Museum, Bird Street, now the Registry Office.

The architects Lovatt and Bidlake designed an impressive list of works, from railway buildings, docks and reservoirs, to churches, hotels and theatres, and landmark buildings in London. The include the Carlton Hotel, Nos 16 and 17 St James’s Place, later the Stafford Hotel, and His Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket, the New Gaiety Theatre in the Strand, and the King’s Theatre, Hammersmith, as well as the New Theatre Royal in Birmingham, Bilston Town Hall and the Congregational Church Sedgley. The firm also built the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris for GE Street.

Henry Lovatt (1831-1913) was born in Wolverhampton and trained as an architect. He formed a partnership with another local architect, George Bidlake, in Darlington Street in 1853. Then in 1858 he bought the small firm of builders and contractors, John Ellis, also in Darlington Street, and turned it into an important firm in the Victorian building industry.

Lovatt lived a full and varied life. On his estate at Low Hill in Wolverhampton, he bred pedigree shorthorn cattle and sheep, grew equally celebrated orchids and collected art, including a collection of watercolours that he sold at Christie’s in 1907 when he retired and left Low Hill.

Lovatt’s partner George Bidlake (1830-1892) was a Wolverhampton architect who lived at No 54 Waterloo Road, next to the Subscription Library. His offices were in Darlington Street until his partnership with Lovatt in 1853.

Bidlake also designed Queen Street Congregational Chapel (demolished), Saint Jude’s Church (1867-1869), Tettenhall Road, Saint Mary’s Church, Coseley, Tettenhall Towers, now part of Tettenhall College, Trinity Methodist Church, Compton Road (demolished), the workhouse at Trysull, and the Congregational Chapel, Stone.

Bidlake wrote on architectural matters and in 1865 published Sketches of Churches Designed for the Use of Nonconformists. He later moved to Leamington.

His son, William Henry Bidlake (1861-1938), was the leading Birmingham architect in the Arts and Crafts movement and was the Director of the School of Architecture at Birmingham School of Art in 1919-1924. He had been a pupil of George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907), a leading Gothic Revival architect, and was known in his own time as ‘the man who rebuilt Birmingham’.

The museum moved in 1958 into the former probate court to the north of the library building. The museum closed in 1970 and the collections went into storage. The library moved out of its original building to the Friary in 1989-1990. The building was listed Grade II in 1993 and in 2003 became the Lichfield Registry Office, now the Lichfield Registration Office. The location beside Beacon Park and the views of Lichfield Cathedral from the Remembrance Gardens and Minister Pool provide romantic backdrops for wedding photographs.

The former Probate Court stands on the site of the childhood home of David Garrick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The former Probate Court next door is also a Grade II listed building. It stands on the site of the house where the actor David Garrick (1716-1779) spent his early life. Hs mother, Arabella Clough, was the daughter of a Vicar Choral of Lichfield Cathedral, Anthony Clough, and he was educated at Lichfield Grammar School before becoming one of the first and last students at the school Samuel Johnson set up in Edial.

Garrick’s early family home was demolished in 1856, and the former probate court was built in 1856-1858. It is a single-storey building with a basement. An interesting feature is the elliptical-headed entrance has moulded arch and hood, the recessed six-panel door and the frieze above inscribed ‘Probate Court.’

In many dioceses, each archdeaconry had its own probate court. In Lichfield, this did not happen and the Consistory Court was the main court for the whole diocese. Until 1858, wills were generally proved in the diocesan courts, so the building in Lichfield is a rare example of a purpose-built probate court.

A plaque on the former Probate Court recalls the actor David Garrick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Westminster Jews’ Free School closed 80 years ago, but the building remains a landmark

The former Westminster Jews’ Free School on Hanway Place, off Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I posed, in jest, a conundrum the other day, asking why there are no Greek cafés or restaurants on Greek Street in Soho. But, of course, in my discussion of the cultural diversity of that one street in Soho – from Greek and French to Italian and Irish, all contributing to the mosaic of life in England today – I ought to have referred too to the Jewish school that was on Greek Street for many years.

The Westminster Jews’ Free School was established by the independent Western Synagogue in 1811, before the government provided any funds for education. The school was founded under the auspices of the Western Synagogue to teach Hebrew, English, writing and arithmetic.

Originally, the aim of the school was ‘that male children of the Jewish persuasion (whose parents are unable to afford them education) be instructed in Hebrew and English reading, writing and arithmetic; that the principle of religion be carefully inculcated, and every exertion used to render them good and useful members of society.’

The school was formalised in 1820, it was funded by voluntary contributions and classes were held at the teachers’ homes. By 1837, the school committee had decided to rent a premises in Stanhope Street but by 1843 this was too small and a new school was opened at 59-60 Greek Street, opposite the Pillars of Hercules, which I was writing about earlier this week.

The children were admitted from age 5 to 12 and discharged at 13. As well as teaching, the boys received gifts of clothing and on his bar mitzvah each boy was given an entire new outfit was provided.

The equivalent girls’ school opened at Richmond Buildings, 21 Dean Street, in 1846. Shortly after, it too moved to 59-60 Greek Street. Its aims were ‘For the diffusion of religion and knowledge of moral and social principles among the young and ignorant.’

The two schools were amalgamated in 1853 and named the Westminster Jews’ Free School. By the time education was made compulsory and school boards were set up in the 1870s, it was a large, successful establishment.

The school moved from Greek Street to Hanway Place in 1883 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The school remained at 59-60 Greek Street for 40 years. But by 1882, it was obvious the school was no longer big enough. A new school that could accommodate 500 children was built on the north side of Hanway Place, a narrow lane near the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, and it was consecrated in July 1883.

Because the school was located between Bloomsbury and Soho, it brought together an economically diverse Jewish community. The school charged fees to attend, but many scholarships were available. The school management committee included members of the prominent and wealthy Montefiore and Rothschild families and wealthy local businessmen and investors who saw the school as both a charitable and religious undertaking.

The wages and resources for teachers were much better than schools of comparative size in similar areas, staff turnover was low, teachers stayed for years, wages were increased regularly.

School prizes were endowed by prominent figures, including Sir David Salomons was the first Jewish Lord Mayor of London, one of the first Jewish MPs and a founder of the London and Westminster bank, and his nephew, Sir David Lionel Salomons. Yet, despite this, many of the children came from families that still lived in poverty well into the early 20th century.

At its peak, the school had 700 children on its rolls. But attendance was falling off by the 1930s, and the last pupil enrolled in 1939. A famous pupil was Harry Ehrengott, the only fireman during World War II who was awarded the George Cross for bravery, the highest honour that can be awarded to a civilian.

After the end of World War II 80 years ago, Westminster Jews’ Free School finally closed on 31 December 1945.

The former Westminster Jews’ Free School was converted into flats and offices in the late 1990s. But the name of the school is still to be seen in the beautiful terracotta decoration and lettering.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

Westminster Jews’ Free School closed 80 years ago on 31 December 1945 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The pink supercar is back in front of the hotel in St Pancras, but the owner still remains a mystery

The pink McLaren has been parked outside the hotel in St Pancras since 2018 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The pink car is back outside the hotel in St Pancras. It had been missing for some months, but when we were walking from St Pancras to Euston Station last week I noticed it was back in its favourite spot in London once again.

The St Pancras London, Autograph Collection hotel is the frontispiece of St Pancras railway station. The station is one of the main rail termini in London and the final stop for international trains to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. The hotel re-opened in 2011, and occupies much of the former Midland Grand Hotel designed by George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878) which opened in 1873 and closed in 1935.

The St Pancras Renaissance London Hotel opened to guests on 14 March 2011, and the formal grand opening was on 5 May – 138 years to the day after the hotel first opened in 1873. The hotel was transferred from Marriott’s Renaissance Hotels brand to its Autograph Collection brand three months ago (3 June 2025), and was renamed St Pancras London, Autograph Collection.

Meanwhile, the pink car is also back in front of the hotel. The £150,000 supercar can reach speeds of 200 mph, even though most of London is limited to 20 mph. The car seemed not to move from its parking spot for several years, and was there throughout the pandemic.

The McLaren is owned by a guest at the hotel, who permanently moved into one of the apartments before the start of the pandemic. The car soon became a landmark in the Euston, King’s Cross and St Pancras area, even appearing on Google street view.

Since then, it has become the focus of many postings on social media, and it is now a local attraction with people taking ‘selfies’ beside it. But workers, residents and visitors alike were all baffled when the car went missing recently.

There were countless theories about the car and its owner. Some said the car was originally a different colour but was given a pink makeover by a specialist garage. Other rumours said it had been a gift to someone without a driving license holder, or suggested that the owner had moved into the hotel as a permanent resident shortly before the pandemic and could not return home due to travel restrictions.

Others suggest the hotel allows the supercar to be parked not in the lot but right at the entrance since because it attracts attention that is more valuable than expensive advertising.

Staff at the hotel then revealed that the owner is a permanent resident in one of the apartments in the hotel building. When the car went missing recently there was a fresh round of speculation until the same staff said the owner had just taken it on holiday.

The McLaren 570S is worth more than £150,000, and it has been outside the hotel since 2018 at least. It must need high insurance cover, particularly as it’s in the open on a busy street in London.

But the identity of the owner of the pink car still remains a mystery.

The future of sculptures by Epstein and Meadows seems unclear as the TUC sells off Congress House

Congress House on Great Russell Street, London, built in 1958, is being dold by the TUC (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The future of two famous and favourite sculptures in Bloomsbury seems uncertain as the TUC (Trades Union Congress) moved to the final stages of selling off Congress House on Great Russell Street, close to the British Museum.

The TUC agreed last year to sell off Congress House after reports showed major work was needed if the building it was to keep up with environmental standards. The TUC is looking for a new modern home for the trade union movement.

The TUC appointed Newmark (formerly Gerard Eve) to manage the sale and a competitive tender process. Congress House was viewed 100 times and 10 bids from prospective buyers were narrowed down to three bids before he TUC has agreed on 28 June to prepare heads of agreement for a sale.

Already the basement and other storage spaces have been cleared, significant documents have been transferred to the TUC archives at Warwick, and a project is in hand to preserve the history of Congress House.

The sale of Congress House, a Grade II listed building with ca 138,000 sq ft across six floors, has also meant the closure of Congress Centre, a well-known London venue, on 4 July and redundancy negotiations with many staff members.

‘The Spirit of Brotherhood’ by Bernard Meadows at Congress House in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Congress House has been the TUC headquarters since 1958, and Congress Centre appeared in popular television shows such as Killing Eve and Netflix’s The Crown.

David du Roi Aberdeen won an architectural competition to design the new TUC headquarters in Great Russell Street in 1948. Staff began to move into the offices in 1956. Congress House was officially opened on 27 March 1958 along with the unveiling of a giant pietà-style statue of a woman cradling her dead son. Carved in situ in the internal courtyard by Sir Jacob Epstein, it was commissioned as a memorial to trade unionists who had died in the two world wars.

Epstein had previously cast a bronze portrait of the TUC General Secretary Ernest Bevin, commissioned in 1943. Although he was invited by the TUC General Secretary to enter the competition he refused. But he agreed to take on a paid commission, and argued that he should be paid for his labour.

The Pietà sculpture by Jacob Epstein at Congress House (Photograph: Matt Brown / Wikipedia / CCL 2.0)

The scale of the installation means the final piece looks very different from the original model. It was described in a contemporary TUC internal document as ‘a memorial for the dead and an act of faith for the living’.

The front of the building is dominated by ‘The Spirit of Brotherhood’, a bronze sculpture by Bernard Meadows representing the spirit of trade unionism with the strong helping the weak. It was cast section by section by skilled craftsmen. It shows two semi-clad male figures, one standing over the other; one figure is sitting helpless on the ground while the other is stretching out to help him.

Bernard Meadows (1915-2005) was associated at an different stages in his career with Henry Moore, and was also part of the Geometry of Fear school, a loose-knit group of sculptors whose prominence was established at the 1952 Venice Biennale.

Meadows was born in Norwich in 1915, and educated at the City of Norwich School. After training as an accountant, he attended Norwich School of Art and in 1936 became Henry Moore's first assistant at his studio in Kent, and took part in the first Surrealist exhibition in London that year. He moved to Chalk Farm on 1937, assisting Moore in his studio at Hampstead, and he studied at the Royal College of Art and at the Courtauld Institute.

At the outbreak of World War II, Meadows registered as a conscientious objector. But when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, he withdrew his objection and was called up to the Royal Air Force.

After World War II, he returned to Moore’s studio and helped him with his marble sculpture ‘Three Standing Figures’ (1947) and his bronze ‘Family Group’ (1949). He found acclaims with an elm figure exhibited in the open air sculpture exhibition at Battersea Park in 1951, alongside the Festival of Britain, which went to the Tate Gallery.

Meadows exhibited in the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale a year later, with Anthony Caro, Lynn Chadwick and Eduardo Paolozzi. Their angular styles, contrasted with the rounded work of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth gave them the name of the ‘Geometry of Fear.’ His edgy pieces often based on animals and seemingly carved from shrapnel could imply Cold War menace.

His first solo exhibition was at Gimpel Fils in 1957, with four more in the decade to 1967, and he also exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1964.

Meadows was a Professor of Sculpture at the Royal College of Art for 20 years, from 1960 to 1980. He returned to assist Henry Moore again at Perry Green, Hertfordshire, from 1977, after Moore’s health started to fail. After Moore died in 1986, he became an acting director of the Henry Moore Foundation. He died in London in 2005.

‘The Spirit of Brotherhood’ by Bernard Meadows at Congress House represents the spirit of trade unionism with the strong helping the weak (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Congress House was one of the earliest post-war buildings in Britain to be listed at Grade II*, in 1988. The design by the London-born architect David Du Roi Aberdeen was chosen because it was explicitly modern. He employed real craftsmen who had a great passion for their work and used eclectic materials. All the labourers and craftsmen on site had to be a member of a trade union to work there.

Congress House is a significant post-war building in Bloomsbury and one of the great physical testaments of the British labour movement. It was designed to be light and airy and very different from the pre-war 1930s architecture found in many public buildings.

The building was 14 years in the making, its existence mandated by a resolution passed in 1944 calling for a new centre of the organised workforce, a proud space that could not only honour the ‘supreme sacrifice’ trade unionists had made ‘in the successful prosecution of the war to overthrow the yoke of Nazi domination and the annihilation of the Nazi creed’, but also to encourage cultural development, training and participation among working people.

Its curved glass, lightness and open space resembles many of Le Corbusier’s unrealised design sketches. The wood was donated by fraternal unions from across the globe, while the street facings were shaped from Cornwall granite slabs as a gesture of solidarity with Cornish communities confronting souring economic prospects.

Much of the wood for the panelling was donated from trade unions and labour movements around the world, while the Cornish granite was sourced from a variety of quarries in order to help relieve unemployment in those areas.

All the construction work was completed and overseen by union members: even the Royal Horse Guards who were invited to perform a fanfare at the formal opening were made members of the Musicians’ Union for the occasion.

The end of Congress House is seen by many as a symbolic moment of selling off the family silver at a time where many unions are struggling to maintain relevance and the leading structures of the trade union movement seem to be losing their sense of direction.

The existence of the building was purely determined by union workers democratically mandating it, physically constructing it, aesthetically shaping it, and appealing to union workers from across the world for assistance in its realisation. Now it may soon fall into the hands of private developers, and no-one seems to be expressing concern for the future of the works by Epstein and Meadows.

What is the future for ‘The Spirit of Brotherhood’ by Bernard Meadows at Congress House? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A walk though Soho to ask why there is no Greek restaurant or church on Greek Street

The Pillars of Hercules on Greek Street, Soho, celebrates the feats of Hercules in Greek mythology (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

One of the silly conundrums I pose when I find myself in Soho is: why is there no Greek restaurant on Greek Street?

Greek Street, which runs from Soho Square to Shaftesbury Avenue, takes its name from the small Greek church that stood on Hog Lane, now buried under Charing Cross Road, roughly where the Montague Pyke pub now stands.

An early map by Fairthorn and Newcourt in 1658 shows the location as a rectangular field that may have been owned by the Crown. A parcel of land known as Soho Fields was steadily sold off to developers.

Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans, acquired the ownership of the area in the 1660s, and then leased out the land to Joseph Girle. He received permission to develop the area and then, in turn, passed on the lease for development to a builder, Richard Frith, who gives his name to Frith Street, where Mozart stayed at No 20 in 1764-1765.

Work on developing Greek Street began in 1680. William Morgan’s map in 1682 shows Greek Street with 17 plots on its east side and 12 on the west side, and the street was bisected by Queen’s Street, now Bateman Street.

The Pillars of Hercules, a half-timber pub dating from the early 18th century, on Greek Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The origins of the first Greek Orthodox Church in London dates back to the late 17th century. The first church was founded to meet the needs of a growing Greek community in London.

The main driving force behind the new church was Metropolitan Joseph Georgerinis of Samos. A Greek priest, Father Daniel Voulgaris, and number of Greeks living in London signed a petition in 1674 seeking permission ‘to build a church in any part of the city of London, where they may freely exercise their religion according to the Greek Church’.

Permission was granted in 1675 and work began in 1677 on building a small church. The church was completed in 1681, and was dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary.

The church stood at what was then the edge of the city in Soho in Hog Lane, off Charing Cross Road, and Hog Lane eventually became known as Greek Street. Most Greeks in London at the time were refugees from the oppression of the Ottoman Turks, but lived and worked in the City and around the ports of London. The church was too far from those Greek residents and they found they were unable to attend the Divine Liturgy regularly or support its function.

The church ended up being sold in 1682 and the building was taken over by another group of refugees, French Protestant Huguenots who had fled to England. There were more than 30 Huguenot churches and chapels in London by the early 18th century.

Although the church changed hands, the name Greek Street stuck with the street, which was laid out in the 1670s and 1680s, with taverns, coffee houses and tradesmen’s workshops.

William Hogarth’s painting and print, ‘Noon’ (1736-1738) shows a scene outside the former Greek church on Greek Street

William Hogarth produced a set of four paintings and prints in 1736-1738, including one called ‘Noon’ that shows a scene outside the Greek church, which by then had become the French Church. The spire in the background is either Saint Anne’s Church, Soho, or Saint Giles-in-the-Fields.

The early residents of Greek Street included Arthur Annesley (1678-1737), 5th Earl of Anglesey and 6th Viscount Valentia, who was MP for Cambridge and for New Ross, Co Wexford, in the English and Irish Houses of Commons at the same time. He owned large estates near Camolin, Wexford, and his offices in Ireland included Vice-Treasurer and Paymaster General and Governor of Co Wexford.

Casanova stayed on Greek Street when he was visiting London in 1764. No 1 was once the home of Sir William Beckford (1709-1770), twice Lord Mayor of London (1762, 1769). Other residents included Josiah Wedgwood in 1774-1797.

The writer Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), author of Confessions of an Opium-Eater (1821), also stayed on Greek Street for a time. Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) began designing London’s sewer system in the offices of the Westminster Commissioners Sewers at No 1 Greek Street. No 1 later became the House of Saint Barnabas.

The passageway through the arch seen from Manette Street, with the name of the Pillars of Hercules seen above (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

With no Greek restaurants, and the long disappearance of the Greek church, the only hint of a Greek presence, past or present, on Greek Street is through the name Greek mythology has given to the Pillars of Hercules, a half-timbered pub at No 7, at the north end of Greek Street.

The name celebrates the feats of Hercules, who was renowned for his strength and courage, and two landmarks, the Rock of Gibraltar on the north side and Mount Hacho on the south side that mark the entrance to the Mediterranean. Greek mythology says Hercules set up the pillars after cleaving a path through the land to create the Straits of Gibraltar during his tenth laboir. The northern pillar is the Rock of Gibraltar, while the southern pillar is either Jebel Musa in Morocco or Monte Hacho in Ceuta.

Most of what exists of the Pillars of Hercules today was built around 1910. But a pub has been on the site since before 1700, and it was first recorded in 1709.

The passageway through the arch at the side of the pub through leads into Manette Street, named after Dr Manette, one of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities, who is described by Charles Dickens as living near Soho Square.

Greek mythology says Hercules created the Straits of Gibraltar when he pushed two pillars apart, separating Europe from Africa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A sign at the pub says the Pillars of Hercules was also frequented in the 19th century by the poet, cricket lover and Catholic mystic Francis Thompson (1859-1906), author of the poem The Hound of Heaven.

Those literary associations were revived in the 1970s when the Pillars of Hercules was known as a literary pub and the meeting place of writers such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Clive James and Ian Hamilton. Clive James named his second book of literary criticism At the Pillars of Hercules, apparently because most of the pieces were commissioned, delivered or written there.

The pub closed on 24 February 2018, but reopened later that year as Bar Hercules under new owners Be At One. In 2022, the cocktail bar chain Simmons took over the pub, and the pub continues to serve under the name of the Pillars of Hercules above the arch and the sign of Hercules above the Greek Street façade.

Other premises on Greek Street today include the Coach and Horses (No 29), the Gay Hussar restaurant (No 2) and Maison Bertaux (No 28), the oldest French pâtisserie in London. Three of the mirrors in the shop contain the inscriptions Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and each year, the shop creates a tableau vivant on 14 July to celebrate Bastille Day – so, even if you can’t get a good Greek meal on Greek Street, there is always a good French patisserie.

As for the former Greek church on Greek Street, it was demolished in 1934. However, the inscription commemorating the foundation of the first Greek Orthodox Church in London has survived and can still be seen in the left part of the narthex of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Bayswater.

Sunlight on the waters of the Straits of Gibraltar between the Pillars of Hercules and the coasts of Spain and Morocco (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Quaker Meeting House on North Street and its garden are among the hidden gems to be found in Leighton Buzzard

Friends’ Meeting House in Leighton Buzzard was first built in 1787 and registered in 1789 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I walked around Leighton Buzzard and Linslade recently, spending an afternoon looking at the historic buildings and churches, including All Saints’ Church in the centre of Leighton Buzzard, and Saint Barnabas Church in Linslade, two or three minutes walk from Leighton Buzzard railway station.

I also visited the Quaker Meeting House at 25 North Street, one of the hidden gems of the Leighton Buzzard is, tucked away out of sight behind the behind the houses and tall narrow gates.

There were Quakersor members of the Religious Society of Friends in Leighton Buzzard in the mid-18th century, but there was no meeting house there so they travelled to worship in Woburn Sands, where there was a meeting at Hogsty End.

The house of Joseph Brooks in Leighton Buzzard was registered for Quaker worship in 1761, but a regular meeting was not settled in the town until 1776, when meetings were held in a loft at the rear of premises in Market Square owned by John Grant, a grocer and chandler. John Grant built what is now the small meeting room in 1787 and registered it as a meeting house in 1789.

The Quaker Meeting House in Leighton Buzzard is tucked away behind houses on North Street and tall narrow gates (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The main meeting room was added when the building was extended in 1812. At the time, the extension was for the women’s meeting. John Grant’s widow finalised the transfer to Friends of the meeting house to Friends in 1844, along with the adjoining cottages, which Grant had also bought. The cottages are now managed by a housing association.

The plain interior of the meeting house expressed the simplicity demanded of Friends at the time. The high windows and lack of distracting ornament were designed to help Friends detach from the world outside during the period of worship.

The meeting house was restored in 1953 and the wood stained to the colour it is today. The benches remain but are set to the side of the building, clearing a space for a circle of chairs in the centre of the room.

There is no hierarchy in meeting today, and worshippers are welcome to sit where they please, but this was not the case when the meeting house was built. The ministers’ gallery and facing benches remain where they were at the beginning of the 19th century when the endorsed ministers and the elders sat there.

The benches now placed at the side of the meeting room were once arranged in two rows, one for men and one for women, and faced towards the elders and ministers.

At the opposite end of the meeting room to the minsters’ gallery is the 19th century room divide. Since 1670, men and women Friends had held separate business meetings. The room divide made a space for each meeting and has shutters that can be opened for large meetings and for weddings and funerals.

When men’s and women’s meetings were set up, it was intended that they had spiritual equality and parallel agendas on church affairs but the meetings soon became gendered. Thus the women became responsible for the care of the poor and for the domestic arrangements in the meeting house and so on, while the men took responsibility for church affairs.

Towards the end of the 19th century, women began to question the separation and Quakers held their first fully United Yearly Meeting in 1909.

There is a further room divide in the small meeting room. This divide was built in the 1960s and provides a sound barrier between the two rooms, particularly when there are enough children for a children’s meeting or tea is being prepare while a meeting continues.

The meeting house seen from the garden or former burial ground (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As part of the 1953 restoration, the gravestones were moved from the graves to the sides of the burial ground, and a lawn was laid over the burial area. In keeping with Quaker practice, the gravestones are of the same size and materials and have the same form of words. They were placed in the same manner in the burial ground to avoid distinction between rich and poor. Some of the gravestones have been re-laid to make a path to the far end of the garden.

Quakers established a Lancastrian or British School in Leighton Buzzard in 1813 and in 1835-1839 Leighton Monthly Meeting donated to American Quaker efforts to help runaway slaves from the southern plantations.

A number of prominent Friends in Leighton Buzzard were bankers such as the Bassett and Harris families. The Bassett family were probably the best known of these Quaker families. Peter Bassett was influential in creating a bank in the town, now Barclay’s Bank. Mary Bassett has a school named after her in the town. She died in London but her ashes are buried in Leighton Buzzard burial ground.

The garden in the burial ground behind the meeting house is now a quiet place to be still and find peace. There are occasional garden working parties and a labyrinth of sorts cut into the grass offers a spiral walk for meditation.

• Meeting for Worship is held in the Meeting House each Sunday at 10:45 am, and there is a 30-minute Meeting for Worship on the first Wednesdays at 12:30.

The garden behind the meeting house is now a quiet place to be still and find peace (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Rashida Jones goes down memory lane in search of her Irish Jewish ancestors in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’

The Irish Jewish Museum is housed in the former synagogue on Walworth Road in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this month, during a family visit to Dublin, I was staying in Rathmines, close to Portobello and the Grand Canal, and I took time each day to stroll through the streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’, between the South Circular Road and the Canal, between Kelly’s Corner and Clanbrassil Street.

I was looking for streets and houses where many members of the extended Comerford family – cousins of my grandfather and my father – had lived in the first half of the last century, searching out the family home of artists like Harry Kernoff, and reminiscing and recalling memories of the Bretzel, the last kosher bakery on Lennox Street, and the small synagogues of ‘Little Jerusalem’ that I remember from the days when I played in these street as a schoolboy in the early 1960s, including the small and pious shuls on Lennox Street, Walworth Road and Saint Kevin’s Parade.

The combination of family history, Jewish history, genealogy, childhood memories and local history that are brought together in this one small area are a heady mixture that I find stimulating and exciting.

But, in the days that followed, I soon found myself stumbling across an old edition of the American version of the television series Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing the ancestors of the writer and actor Rashida Jones who had also lived in the streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’.

Her father was the songwriting legend Quincy Jones; her mother was the actor Peggy Lipton, who died after the programme was made. The programme concentrated on Peggy Lipton’s ancestors and brought together many of the memories that I face when I return to ‘Little Jerusalem’.

The programme was first broadcast in the US on 4 May 2012, but I had never seen it before, and I had never thought of Rashida Jones as having Irish ancestors or Jewish ancestors, still less of her having Irish Jewish ancestors who lived in ‘Little Jerusalem’.

I took part in one programme in the BBC version of Who Do You Think You Are? back in 2010, introducing the actor Dervla Kirwan to her Jewish ancestors in Dublin. Her great-grandfather, Henry Kahn, who ran a shop in Capel Street and who inspired an incident in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

That programme has been repeated and rebroadcast many times, much to my amusement. But working on the research and production, it also made me aware of the limitations of trying to encapsulate genealogical research into the short time a programme like this allows.

In the programme made for the US version of Who Do You Think You Are?, Rashida Jones learned about her Latvian-Jewish ancestors who changed their name to Benson. Initially, the programme seemed to suggest the name Benson was chosen to disguise the family’s Jewish heritage. But this was not so, and the name Benson was part of the story of her Jewish ancestors in ‘Little Jerusalem’, bringing her to the Irish Jewish Museum in the former synagogue on Walworth Road.

Rashida Jones is known for her roles in Parks and Recreation and The Social Network. She is the daughter of Quincy Jones, the renowned music producer, and Peggy Lipton, the actor known for The Mod Squad, who had already researched his family stories. But Rashida Jomes knew very little about her Jewish heritage on her mother’s side of the family.

Peggy Lipton (1946-2019) was born into a Jewish family in New York, the daughter of the artist Rita Benson and a corporate lawyer Harold Lipton (1911-1990), who married in 1941. Harold Lipton’s parents, Max Lipschitz and Alice ‘Gussie’ Goldfarb, were Jewish immigrants from Belarus, who changed their name to Lipton in the 1930s; Rita Benson was born in Dublin to Jewish parents from Latvia.



Rita Hettie Rosenberg, who later became Rita Benson, was born at 15 Victoria Street, Dublin, on 30 May 1912, the daughter of Hyman Rosenberg and Jenny Benson. Her great-great-grandparents, Benjamin Benson and Sophia Weinstein, had arrived in Ireland from Latvia, which was then in the Russian Empire.

Rita left Dublin with her sister Pearl as teenagers in 1926. The sisters who were just 13 and 18 years old. They made the journey from Ireland on their own and first stayed in New York with their uncle Elliot Benson.

Rita was still using her full name in 1936, but by 1939, when she became a US citizen, she changed her name to Rita Benson as part of the naturalisation process, and she married Harold Lipton in 1941.

Rashida visited Dublin and the Irish Jewish Museum, where the genealogist Stuart Rosenblatt, who spent decades compiling Jewish records in Ireland, presented her with her grandmother’s birth certificate, showing Rita was born on 15 May 1912 to Hyman and Jeannie Rosenberg.

At the time of the 1911 census, Hyman Rosenberg was 29, a tailor, who was born in Russia, Jeannie was 26, and they were living on Dufferin Avenue, with a son and daughter, Pearl (3) and Harold (2).

Jeannie Benson and Hyman Rosenberg were married Hyman in Dublin in 1906. Jeannie was born in Manchester. Her parents – Rashida’s great-great-grandparents – were Sophia Weinstein and Benjamin Benson. Benjamin was born in the Russian Empire ca 1839, settled in Ireland and worked as a Hebrew teacher.

Sophia and Benjamin Benson appear in the 1911 Irish census, living with Sophia in Peyton’s Cottages, Dublin, and they are recorded as speaking Hebrew. He was 72 and a Hebrew teacher, she was 67. They had been married for 53 years, and they were the parents of nine children, four of whom were still living. A photograph of Benjamin Benson in the archives show him in formal dress, complete with a top hat.

Rashida’s journey continued from Dublin to Latvia in search of Benjamin Benson’s family. Latvian military enlistment records from 1871 show Benjamin’s father, Shlomo, lived in Hasenpoth, now Aizpute, a small town in western Latvia that was then part of the Russian Empire.

The Latvian records include a residence permit from 1834 for Shlomo even before he had a surname. At the time, Jews were being forced by law to accept fixed surnames, and so Benson became the official family name.

Tragically, those family members who stayed behind in Latvia faced a much darker fate and were murdered in the Holocaust. Ghetto housing lists, passport applications and residency registers documented their lives before World War II – and, in some cases, how abruptly those lives came to an end.

They were forced into the Riga Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, and on 30 November and 8 December 1941, over 25,000 Latvian Jews were marched to the Rumbula Forest and murdered. The episode closed with Rashida and Peggy visiting the Rumbula Forest Memorial, with its large menorah and engraved memorial stones.

The Bretzel on Lennox Street was once run by the brothers Sidney and George Benson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

But programmes like this are made for popular audiences, and often cannot go into great detail. I found myself asking why, when Rashida Jones was visiting the Irish Jewish Museum on Walworth Road, she was not brought around the corner to see the house at 15 Victoria Street where the Rosenberg family lived and where Rita Benson was born.

Or they could have visited the former home of the Rosenberg family on Dufferin Avenue, off the South Circular Road and close to Greenville Hall, once one of the largest synagogues in Dublin until in closed in 1984.

I would have been interested too in knowing too which Benson and Rosenberg families she may be related to.

Some members of the Rosenberg family changed their name to Ross. The Benson families in ‘Little Jerusalem’ included the brothers Sidney and George Benson and who ran the Bretzel Bakery on Lennox Street as Bensons.

The late Asher Benson (1921-2006) took part in the Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936. He was the driving force in setting up the Irish Jewish Museum, and was the author of Jewish Dublin, Portraits of Life by the Liffey, published posthumously in 2007. His sons the travel agents Alan and Gerry Benson were key figures in the Jewish community in Dublin. My friend Alan, who was once president of the Jewish Representative Council, died in 2014

Scenes of Rashida Jones eating challah in the Bretzel on Lennox Street, or knocking on doors in Victoria Street and Dufferin Avenue would have enriched more of my memories of ‘Little Jerusalem’.

Zekher Tzadik Livrakha, זכר צדיק לברכה (May the memory of the righteous be a blessing)

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום