Park Row Synagogue and Clergy House

Park Row Synagogue and Clergy House form an L-shaped complex constructed of local rubble stone with ashlar Bath stone dressings and an elaborate entrance portal. Interior fittings include pitch pine seating, cast-iron columns with decorative balustrades, mahogany Ark doors, brass religious fittings, and floors covered with encaustic tiles and flagstones.

The synagogue building follows an L-plan, with the prayer hall oriented on a north-east/south-west axis. A first-floor gallery stands above the prayer hall, with connecting rooms positioned over a lobby and inner entrance hall. An internal stair tower links the two floors and opens into the lobby via steps and a gated entranceway. Attached to the south-east stands a single-bay, four-storey clergy house (including basement floor) of rectangular plan, with a small two-storey extension to the north-east. The synagogue's prayer hall extends behind and above the clergy house to the north-east, built on a raised bank retained by a rubble stone wall. At the rear of the synagogue, separated by a rectangular yard, stands a rectangular two-storey former communal hall set within a steeply rising bank.

Setting and Exterior

The complex occupies a site enclosed by tall stone walling constructed within the hillside, with buildings set at progressively higher levels towards the rear. All roofs are hipped and covered with clay tiles. Low rubble stone walling with stone coping and late-20th-century railings forms the right frontage, abutting the footpath on Park Row. The four-storey clergy house stands forward, close to the boundary wall. To the left the walling rises approximately 2 metres high, with ashlar dressings to a wide central gate pier. Pennant stone steps, lined with coped walling rising to entrance piers topped with large stone ball finials, lead up to the synagogue entrance forecourt, which is set well back from the road.

The clergy house presents pairs of centrally placed windows with ashlar stone dressings, quoins and banding to each floor on its road front, below a dressed stone gable end. The windows are hornless four-pane timber sashes. The south-west elevation rises three storeys and features a front door to the left beneath a hood with console brackets and an ashlar architrave. The fanlight above the door has margin glazing. Window openings sit above the doorway, one to each upper floor, fitted with timber sashes with horns and margin glazing. The north-east elevation is rendered and has a shallow two-storey projection containing a front door and two window openings.

The synagogue façade is built of rubble stone with ashlar quoins and banding. A double gateway entrance at the centre features an ashlar Italianate portico comprising an Etruscan column to each side with engaged pilasters. The round arch above incorporates a central console keystone with roundels in the spandrels to either side. Above this stands a tripartite window with heavy stone surrounds and leaded coloured panes displaying religious iconography and script. At the upper level, below a plain cornice, an inscribed relief panel, possibly of Coade stone, bears Hebrew script from Isaiah 2:5, translating as "Enter into the house of the Lord". The road front of the synagogue prayer hall is largely concealed behind the clergy house. The visible portion shows regularly spaced openings on two levels in a stone elevation with ashlar quoins. At the rear of the synagogue building an entrance leads into a yard with prayer hall windows to the left. These openings have red brick architraves and heads with stone cills. A modern walkway attaches at clerestory level to a modified window opening and leads to the higher ground at the rear of the plot.

Interior

The entrance gateway opens to a broad lobby and further steps, fitted with twisted iron handrails, ascending to the synagogue entrance on the left. To the right stands a sealed doorway to the prayer hall, with a sealed window opening further right. To the left of the synagogue door are steps leading to the Women's Gallery and neighbouring rooms. Double synagogue doors open into a long rectangular entrance hall with further double doors and a door to the yard at the far end. Steps accessing the former communal hall stand to the left of the yard door. The floor is laid with encaustic tiles. Two sets of double doors to the prayer hall stand to the right of the hallway, featuring religious-themed glass lights in Art Nouveau style (1890s) and brass handles.

The rectangular prayer hall measures six bays long to the left (south-east) and eight bays to the right (north-west). Pitch pine seating arranged in three rows to either side faces the centrally positioned bimah (reading desk). The seating is panelled with acorn finials and fitted with prayer book ledges, some hinged. Some ledges incorporate boxes for prayer shawls. The bimah, with a choir to the rear and warden's box at the front, comprises a curved pine dais with velvet upholstered seating and a reading desk. The metal balustrade carries attached brass candlesticks. A brass hanukiah (nine-branched candelabrum) is fixed between the bimah and choir.

At the north-east end of the hall, set within a niche above two steps, stands an Italianate Ark, whitewashed with gilding and fish scale decoration to the domed canopy. The glass Luhot (two tablets inscribed with the commandments) sits within early-19th-century decorative wrought ironwork in an upper arch, whilst the ner Tamid (glass lantern representing "eternal light") hangs above the Ark doors. The archway to the doors bears Hebrew inscription translating as "Know before Whom you stand", and decorative gilt work lines the arch head and attached moulded doorframe. The designs include interwoven olive branches and ears of wheat. The Ark is fitted with curved panelled mahogany double doors. Pairs of columns to each side are engaged to pilasters with squint arches. To the left of the Ark stands a timber pulpit of unknown origin, and to the left of that, fixed to the wall, hangs a timber Royal Family prayer board from Ramsgate Synagogue (1833). To the right of the Ark are wall-mounted memorial tablets, mainly in marble.

The side walls and south-west wall of the prayer hall are panelled in pine, with two timber collection boxes fixed beside the door entrances. The prayer hall windows are leaded in timber frames, dating from 1933, with Star of David to the upper lights. The Ark doors, the hanukiah (part Dutch and part English), the ironwork on the Luhot, the ner Tamid, and four brass candlesticks on the bimah all originate from the earlier synagogues in Temple Street.

A gallery stands on three sides of the hall, carried on eleven slender iron columns with Corinthian capitals, and corbels to the north end wall. The gallery has been altered at the south-west end where a dividing wall was inserted to remove two bays from the gallery and provide a communal hall behind. The seating to either side of the gallery is plainly detailed, and the lattice fretwork balustrade shows some alteration. The stairs to the first floor have a wreathed pine handrail with stick balusters. Above the landing hangs a coloured leaded window with Star of David motif. Two more windows, one with Hebrew script and another with a Star of David, are located in the inserted toilet facilities beyond. These three windows stand above the main exterior entrance arch to the synagogue.

The interior of the clergy house was not inspected but is thought to contain no fittings of historic note. The former communal hall has toilets to the ground floor and a single room above. The interior of the upper room contains no fittings of interest. The toilets below retain some late-19th- or early-20th-century fittings.