Jewish Heritage UK - Synagogues at Risk

Sunderland, Ryhope Road Synagogue Marcus K Glass 1928

Sunderland Synagogue (Photo Bob Skingle © English Heritage)

Sunderland’s last remaining synagogue at Ryhope Road held its final service in 2006. This Grade II Listed synagogue, designed by little known Newcastle Jewish architect Marcus K. Glass, is an essay in Cinematic Art Deco, rated by Pevsner as ‘vigorous and decorative’. The building was sold to a Jewish charitable trust some years ago and currently stands empty in a town which was once a bastion of Jewish Orthodoxy. The schoolhouse next door has been damaged by fire. The almost identical but unlisted sister Clapton Federation Synagogue in London, also by Glass, closed in May 2005 and was DEMOLISHED in July 2006.

Greenbank Drive Synagogue, Sefton Park, Liverpool, L17 Grade II* Ernest Alfred Shennan 1936-7

(Photo: Peter Williams © English Heritage)

The Challenge: Following closure early in 2008, this rare modernist synagogue was upgraded to Grade II* thanks to the intervention of the Twentieth Century Society. An appropriate new use is urgently being sought.

Manchester, Higher Crumpsall Synagogue Pendleton & Dickinson 1928-29

(Photo: Bob Skingle © English Heritage)

Grade II Listed inter-war synagogue with a well-designed worship space and high quality fixtures and fittings of marble, brass, oak and fine stained glass. Despite an award of £130,000 towards essential structural repairs under the English Heritage and Heritage Lottery Fund Joint Places of Worship Repair Grants Scheme, this synagogue, dubbed when it was built the “White Synagogue” because of its polished stone-clad façade, remains threatened by both neglect and redundancy. Ironically, unlike some older historic synagogues, it is situated barely five minutes walk away from one of the fastest-growing Jewish communities in Europe. Large architecturally significant synagogues and the Anglo-Jewish musical tradition with which they are associated have fallen out of fashion. Synagogue services with trained Hazan [cantor] and choir, a feature at Higher Crumpsall, are threatened with extinction. A quite modest amount of match funding must be raised in order to fulfil the conditions of Higher Crumpsall’s Repair Grant. Part of this capital could be raised by sensible amalgamation with other declining congregations in the neighbourhood, on the Higher Crumpsall site. Jewish Telegraph article [PDF file (1.76MB)]