Jewish Heritage UK - Demolished Sites

London, Clapton Federation Synagogue (Sha'are Shamayim) Marcus Kenneth Glass 1931-32 Demolished July 2006 Photo: Malcolm Smith © Malcolm Smith The only London example by this prolific Newcastle-based Jewish architect in his trademark cinematic style. A sister building to Sunderland's Ryhope Road Synagogue and Newcastle’s Jesmond Synagogue. Sold, complete with fixtures and fittings, by the Federation of Synagogues in June 2005 to the Cannon Charitable Trust within the strictly Orthodox community in North London. Recently rapidly demolished, apparently through fear of a possible Listing. The case highlights the importance of protecting Sunderland Synagogue, the lone survivor of this talented architect’s synagogues – but which also closed in 2006 and has also been sold within the strictly Orthodox community.

Birmingham Progressive Synagogue *Ernest Joseph 1937-38* Demolished February 2006 Photo: Caroline Craggs © English Heritage Rare unspoilt international style synagogue of 1938 that featured a flat roof and rectilinear forms. It had a Star of David worked into the otherwise plain brickwork, exposed brick walls to the Interior and unusual timber and glass Ark that looked like a 1930s wireless set. Architect Ernest Joseph had befriended the Austrian émigré Walter Marmorek, son of the prominent Viennese architect Oskar Marmorek, and no doubt learnt about new currents on the Continent through him. For full story see News.

Dublin, Adelaide Road Synagogue J.J. O'Callaghan 1892 Demolished Spring 2001 Photo: Sharman Kadish © Jewish Heritage The last major historic synagogue in Ireland. The "cathedral synagogue" of Ireland by "One of the greatest of Irish architects" (Obituary in the Irish Builder) and a master of the Venetian Gothic style, much admired by Ruskin himself (although here he stuck to safer Romanesque). Historic building preservation and statutory protection is still in its infancy in Ireland, lagging a long way behind the UK. The speed with which Adelaide Road met its fate was shocking, reminiscent of the large-scale urban renewal demolitions experienced in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s before the conservation movement, headed by the Georgian Group and the Victorian Society, managed to fight back. "Adelaide Road" was willingly sacrificed to developers for an inflated sum by a Jewish community that is in a serious state of decline. Irish history is unpredictable and so too is the history of the Jews in Ireland: but any future wave of immigration has irretrievably lost the potent connection with the Irish Jewish heritage that this flagship synagogue represented. Recorded by the Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage in association with Dúchas, the Irish Heritage Service, in spring 1999.