Brick Lane Jamme Masjid (Former Neuve Eglise)

Brick Lane Jamme Masjid (formerly Neuve Eglise)

A French Protestant chapel built in 1743–4, designed probably by Thomas Stibbs, which has been successively converted into a synagogue (1897) and a mosque (1976), with substantial internal alterations in 1986. The building is constructed of stock brick with stone plinth and dressings, beneath a Welsh slate roof.

The exterior consists of a two-storey structure. The south elevation to Fournier Street presents six bays with a slightly projecting four-bay centrepiece beneath a broad triangular pediment. The pediment contains a sundial dated 1743 inscribed with the Horatian motto 'UMBRA SUMUS' ('we are but shadow'). The ground floor features two round-headed doorways with double-leaf eight-panelled doors set in pilastered stone surrounds with projecting impost blocks, keystones and architraves. The windows above and beside these doors are segment-headed on the ground floor and round-headed on the first floor, all with keystones, bracketed cills and multi-pane glazing with fixed glazing bars. The east elevation to Brick Lane comprises three bays beneath a pediment containing a small circular window. Its fenestration mirrors that of the south elevation, except that a Venetian window with Ionic pilasters occupies the central two bays on the first floor. Two ground floor windows on this elevation have been blocked. The roof structure, altered in 1897, consists of a mansard set behind a parapet with lead-covered dormers and a long timber-and-glass skylight running along the main ridge.

The original chapel interior was a single large hall accessed via the two south doorways, with timber galleries in the form of Doric colonnades running along the east, north and west sides, facing a pulpit and reredos against the south wall. The 1897 synagogue conversion involved removal of part of the east gallery to accommodate a raised bimah (dais) and ark on the centre of the east wall. The 1986 remodelling removed nearly all these timber fittings and created a two-level worship space with an eight-sided lightwell towards the eastern end and a marble mihrab (niche indicating the direction of prayer) in the south-eastern corner. Retained features include six timber columns and two pedimented doorcases. The main entrance is now from the north via No. 59 Brick Lane; the two south doors connect with enclosed staircases to the upper hall and a corridor running round the worship space into the rear courtyard. Three barrel-vaulted cellars below, formerly used for storage, have been converted into prayer rooms and an ablution area. The attic structure above, created in 1897, contains several classrooms opening onto a skylit central corridor, and retains a number of stone tablets inscribed with Hebrew text from the synagogue period.

The building was erected in 1743–4 as the Neuve Eglise, a French Protestant chapel serving the dominant Huguenot community in Spitalfields engaged in silk-weaving. It was an offshoot of the long-established French church in Threadneedle Street in the City of London. In the early 19th century, Jewish immigration prompted the Society for Propagating Christianity among the Jews, an evangelical group founded by the Jewish-born convert Joseph Frey, to lease the building as its headquarters. In 1819 the chapel passed to the Wesleyan Methodists, but later reverted to evangelical missionary use. In 1897 it was acquired by a Lithuanian Orthodox Jewish group called the Mahzikei Hadas ('Strengtheners of the Faith') and converted by the firm Maples into the Spitalfields Great Synagogue, with a Torah school in the remodelled attic. In the second half of the 20th century, as the Jewish population dispersed to the suburbs, Muslim immigrants from eastern India and Bangladesh arrived; the synagogue fell into disuse before becoming a mosque in 1976. In 1986 the remaining internal galleries were removed and the interior remodelled. A freestanding minaret-like tubular steel structure approximately 29 metres tall was added to the Brick Lane frontage in 2009, designed by DGA Architects to recall the form of a minaret.

Adjoining the main building at No. 59 Brick Lane is a three-storey brick house built in 1743 along with the chapel, originally serving as its vestry and school. This building, now part of the mosque complex, is listed separately at Grade II.