The Hackney and East London Synagogue

This synagogue was built in 1897 to designs by Delissa Joseph, with an extension added in 1936 by Cecil J Eprile. There have been minor later alterations.

Exterior

The main façade faces north. The eastern section is the Victorian building, arranged in four bays with simple brick pilasters and pairs of windows: flat-arched windows at the raised basement level, round-headed on the ground floor, and segmental-headed above. The clerestory windows, set back from the main elevation, are semi-circular. A slight difference in brick colour west of these four bays indicates where the 1936 work begins; otherwise the final two bays of the prayer hall are identical to the Victorian section.

The elevation ends with an advancing pedimented portico featuring three round-arched entrances on the ground floor, with prominent white-painted keystones and metal grilles above the doors. Above this arcade runs a simple plat band supporting two scrolls representing the Ten Commandments, then a row of three square-headed windows with a continuous sill. The interwar portion reflects the rhythm and detailing of the Victorian elevation, creating a coherent if unambitious façade. The original railings survive.

Interior

The interior survives very well and is essentially the work of 1897, seamlessly extended in 1936. The prayer hall has a gallery on three sides with two orders of cast-iron Corinthian and archaeologically-accurate Composite columns, timber balcony fronts and iron railings of 1936, and fixed bench seating.

The unusual convex coffered Ark dates from 1897 and was originally accompanied at the east end by the bimah and pulpit, in the Reformed manner. This arrangement was altered in 1936 when a well-crafted, stylish Art Deco central bimah was introduced, with a matching pulpit in front of the Ark. The dais and railings to the Ark also date from this period, as does most likely the majority of the seating. The stained glass in the prayer hall follows a standard design, but each window carries a different dedication commemorating members of the congregation, including one to "Sister Celia and relatives / liquidated by the Nazis 1939-1945". The original lighting scheme survives.

The lobby dates from the 1930s work and has a terrazzo floor and original doors to the prayer hall and staircase, each with a Star of David in its circular glass aperture. Several memorials are displayed in the lobby along with two foundation stones, including one from the original late Victorian building re-sited here in the 1930s. The basement contains classrooms, WCs and a hall with stage and woodblock flooring.

History

The Hackney Synagogue was built in 1897 to designs by Delissa Joseph. The community was originally located on neighbouring Darnley Road before moving in 1885 to the vacated premises of Dalston Synagogue further north. In 1892, the synagogue returned to south Hackney, acquiring a site on what was then Devonshire Road, renamed Brenthouse Road in 1938. Here they constructed a temporary place of worship. The congregation became a constituent of the United Synagogue in 1897 and with affiliation came funds to rebuild. This is the synagogue that stands today, extended in 1936 to designs by Cecil J Eprile, which involved the demolition of two bays of the late 19th-century building, the expansion of the prayer hall by two bays, and the construction of a new entrance lobby on the site of a neighbouring terraced house.

In the second half of the 19th century there was an influx of Eastern European and Russian Jewish refugees to Britain, most settling initially in the Whitechapel and Stepney areas of East London. Their religious practice contrasted with that of established Anglo-Jews who descended from the first post-settlement communities of the 1650s and whose integration into English society was advanced, some holding seats in Parliament. The latter worshipped at "cathedral synagogues" built in a Romanesque or Moorish style in North or West London (the apogee being the New West End Synagogue in Bayswater); the former in makeshift prayer halls in the East End: at the back of factories or houses, such as that at 19 Princelet Street, Spitalfields, or in converted chapels such as that on the corner of Fournier Street and Brick Lane (now a mosque). The anglicised community sought to protect their newly-won rights and acceptance in society by encouraging recent immigrants to join the United Synagogue (founded in 1870) and to adopt the language and cultural practices of their new country. This effort is epitomised by the construction of the grand East London Synagogue in Stepney in 1876-7. An umbrella organisation for the more traditionalist immigrant communities, the Federation of Synagogues, was established in 1887. They also built synagogues in the East End, albeit in a much humbler manner: the Great Garden Street Synagogue is a good example.

These contrasting developments in the story of Jewish communities in England are manifest in the history of the Hackney Synagogue. As some from the immigrant communities of Whitechapel prospered, they moved away from that area to lower-middle class Hackney or Stamford Hill. In 1895 Hackney Synagogue served a district "thickly populated by the better class of Jewish working man" (from M Berstein's work on Jewish Stamford Hill published in 1976, quoted in the Victoria County History volume). The settlement in areas like Dalston or Canonbury was described by Charles Booth in 1902 as "among the first steps upwards of the Whitechapel Jew". The affiliation of the Hackney community to the United Synagogue at this time indicates that the newcomers were moving away from traditionalist rites. With the affiliation came the funds to build a grander building than the old prayer halls of the East End. The movement away from Whitechapel and Stepney accelerated in the interwar period, directed towards the newly-developed suburbs of North London such as Golders Green and Hendon. Communities in Hackney continued to expand too, as evidenced in the extension to the Hackney Synagogue in 1936.

Delissa Joseph designed six other synagogues at Hammersmith, Hampstead, Finsbury Park (demolished), New Cross (destroyed in the Second World War), Queenston Road, Manchester and Cardiff (demolished behind façade). The plans for the latter and for Hackney Synagogue were displayed at the Royal Academy in 1897. He was also a designer of mansion flats, commercial blocks and an expert on the provision of superstructures over the booking halls of London tube stations. He was the nephew of Nathan Solomon Joseph, the first architect for the United Synagogue when it was founded in 1870 and the cousin of Ernest Martin Joseph, the architect of Shell-Mex House on London's Embankment. Cecil J Eprile was also a prolific synagogue architect, his principal works being Cricklewood Synagogue of 1930-1 and Hendon Synagogue of 1934-5.