International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies - Cemetery Project

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LONDON


THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

 

Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain
Contact information at: http://iajgs.org/Member-Index.htm

Jewish Historical Society of England
33 Seymour Place
London W1H 5AP
ENGLAND
phone: 0171-723-5852

Jewish Communities & Records - UK (JCR-UK) website - http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk - records of all Jewish communities and congregations throughout the United Kingdom.
For the Congregation in London, see http://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/london.htm.

Useful Addresses - Synagogue Organisations with Burial Societies

  1. United Synagogue:
         United Synagogue & London Beth Din: Adler House, 735 High Road, London N12 0US, England.
    Telephone: +44 20 8343 8989, Fax: +44 20 8343 6262; Website: http://www.theus.org.uk/
         United Synagogue Burial Society maintains the cemeteries and arranges funerals for members of over 60 congregations, mostly in the vicinity of London. They are not staffed for general queries.
         Sextons Office and North West London Local Office, Ground Floor, Finchley Synagogue, Kinloss Gardens, Finchley London N3 3DU. (Preferred office for Bushey and Willesden Cemeteries)
         North East London Local Office: Ground Floor, Schaller House, 22 Beehive Lane, Ilford, Essex, IG1 3RT (Preferred office for Waltham Abbey, East and West Ham, and Plashet Cemeteries).
         The staff at the United Synagogue cemeteries at Bushey, Waltham Abbey and Willesden has access to a computer index to find grave locations for visitors. Name, the cemetery and the grave location within that cemetery index the graves. The record has the date of burial to distinguish between people with the same name. The system contains data for Bushey, Waltham Abbey, Willesden, Marlow Road & Plashet.
         The United Synagogue now offers on its website, the facility to obtain the exact location of graves in one of its cemeteries. All fields you need to provide are: the cemetery, first name, surname and year of death. The website is: http://www.unitedsynagogue.org.uk/support_services/find_your_family [Source: David Shulman December 2006]
         The following are United Synagogue cemeteries:

    1. Alderney Road Cemetery, Stepney, London E.1 (formerly of Great Synagogues) (disused)

    2. Brady Street Cemetery, Whitechapel, London E.1 (formerly of New and Great Synagogues) (disused):

    3. Bushey Cemetery, Bushey, Hertfordshire (active)

    4. East Ham Cemetery, Marlow Road, High Street South, London E.6 (disused)

    5. Hackney Cemetery, Lauriston Road, London E9: (formerly of Hambro Synagogue) (disused)

    6. Hoxton Cemetery, Hoxton Street, London N1 (formerly of Hambro Synagogue) (no longer exists)

    7. Plashet Cemetery, 361 Manor Park High Street North, London E12 (disused)

    8. Waltham Abbey Cemetery, Skillet Hill (Honey Lane), Waltham Abbey, Essex (active)

    9. West Ham Cemetery, Buckingham Road, Forest Lane, London E15  (closed)

    10. Willesden Cemetery, London NW10 (generally full, unless plot reserved)
       

  2. Federation of Synagogue:
         Burial Society, 45 Watford Way NW4 3AQ, England. Telephone: +44 20 8202 3903; Fax +44 20 8203 0610; Email info@federationofsynagogues.com; Website: http://www.federationofsynagogues.com
         The Federation of Synagogue operates a Burial Society for members of over 20 congregations, mostly in the vicinity of London.
         The following are Federation of Synagogue cemeteries:

    1. Edmonton Cemetery, Montagu Road, Angel Road, Lower Edmonton, London N18

    2. Rainham Cemetery, Upminster Road North, Rainham, Essex (active)
       

  3. Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (Adath Yisroel)
         Burial Society at 40 Queen Elizabeth's Walk, London N16 0HH. Telephone: +44 20 8802 6262/3; Fax +44 20 8800 8764.
         The UOHC operates a burial society for approximately 6,000 members of over 50 orthodox and ultra-orthodox congregations, currently all now in London (apart from a yeshiva in Hitchin).
         The following are cemeteries of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations:

    1. Carterhatch Lane Cemetery, Enfield (active)

    2. Silver Street Cemetery, Goffs Oak, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire (active)
       

  4. Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation
         Honorary Archivist, 9 Lauderdale Road, LONDON, W9 1LT. Source: Charles Ellson charles@ellson.demon.co.uk
         Sephardi Burial Society: 2 Ashworth Road, Maida Vale, W9. Telephone:  0207-289 2573.
         The following are cemeteries of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews' Congregation:

    1. Brentwood Cemetery, Dytchleys, Coxtie Green, Brentwood, Essex (disused)

    2. Edgwarebury Cemetery, Edgwarebury Lane, Edgware, Middx. (active)

    3. Hoop Lane Cemetery East, Hoop Lane, Golders Green, London NWII (active)

    4. Mile End - Nuevo (New) Beth Chaim Cemetery, 320 Mile End Road, London E.1(disused)

    5. Mile End - "Velho" (Old) Cemetery, behind 253 Mile End Rd, London E.1 (disused)
       

  5. Assembly of Masorti Synagogues
         1097 Finchley Road, London NW11 0PU, England. Telephone: +44 20 8201 8772; Fax +44 20 8201 8917; Email office@masorti.org.uk; Website: http://www.masorti.org.uk
         The following are cemeteries of the Masorti movement:

    1. Bulls Cross Ride Cemetery, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire (active)

    2. Edgwarebury Cemetery, Edgwarebury Lane, Edgware, Middx. (active)
       

  6. Movement for Reform Judaism (Reform Synagogues of Great Britain)
         The Sternberg Centre for Judaism, 80 East End Road, London N3 2SY, England. Telephone: +44 20 8349 5640; Fax +44 20 8349 5699; Email iadmin@reformjudaism.org.uk; Website: http://www.reformjudaism.org.uk
          The following are cemeteries of the Reform Judaism:

    1. Edgwarebury Cemetery, Edgwarebury Lane, Edgware, Middx. (active)

    2. Hoop Lane Cemetery West, Hoop Lane, Golders Green, London NWII

    3. Kingsbury Road Cemetery, Balls Pond Road, London N1 (formerly of West London Synagogue) (disused)

    4. New Southgate Cemetery, Brunswick Park Road, London N11. (Hendon Reform Synagogue) (active)
       

  7. Liberal Judaism (Union of Liberal & Progressive Synagogues)
         21 Maple Street, London W1T 4BE, England. Telephone: +44 20 7580 1663; Fax +44 20 7631 9838; Email montagu@liberaljudaism.org; Website: http://www.liberaljudaism.org
         The following are cemeteries of the Liberal Judaism:

    1. Bulls Cross Ride Cemetery, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire (active)

    2. Edgwarebury Cemetery, Edgwarebury Lane, Edgware, Middx. (active)

    3. Willesden (Liberal) Cemetery, Pound Lane, London NW10. (active)
       

  8. Western Marble Arch Synagogue  (formerly the Western Synagogue)
         Western Marble Arch Synagogue, 32 Great Cumberland Place, London W1H
         The following are cemeteries of Western Marble Arch Synagogue (active cemeteries are maintained by the Western Charitable Foundation, an affiliated forganization:

    1. Bulls Cross Ride Cemetery, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire (active)

    2. Edmonton Western Synagogue Cemetery Montagu Road, Lower Edmonton, London N18 (active)

    3. Fulham Road Cemetery, Queen's Elm Parade, London SW3 (disused)
       

  9. West End Great Synagogue
         32 Cumberland Place London W1H 7TN Telephone +44 20 7724 8121 Fax +44 20 7723 4413
         The following are cemeteries of the West End Great Synagogue Burial Society (Chesed v'Emeth)

    1. Bulls Cross Ride Cemetery, Cheshunt, Hertfordshire (active)

    2. Streatham Jewish Cemetery, Rowan Road, Greyhound Lane SW16 (active)


Other Useful Addresses
  1. Anglo-Jewish Archives, The Mocatta Library, University College, Gower Street, LONDON, WC1E 6BT;
  2. Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe: 66 Fairholt Road, London, N16 5EH, ENGLAND Fax: 0044-181-806-5911. Attn: Mr. Marmorstein. They have branches in other strictly Orthodox communities in Manchester, Gateshead (UK), Antwerp, Zurich, Vienna and Strasbourg and are actively protecting Jewish cemeteries as religious sites throughout Europe.
  3. Jewish Community information: http://www.haruth.com/JewsUK.html [October 2000]
  4. Jewish East End Celebration Society: c/o P.O. Box No. 57317 London E1 3WG
    The Society's purposes includes, among others, the focusing of attention on Jewish life and culture in the East End of London; disseminating information about the Jewish East End; re-establishing roots and interest in the Jewish East End; and preserving and documenting past Jewish life.
    website: http://www.jeecs.org.uk  email: c.bettington@jeecs.org.uk
    Society's magazine  - the Cable.
  5. London Jewish Museum: Two locations: Camden & Finchley.
    Camden Town: Raymond Burton House, 129-131 Albert Street, London NW1 7NB.
    Finchley: 80 East End Road, London N3 2SY.
    Check website for details. http://www.jewmusm.ort.org/
  6. Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage in the UK & Ireland: British Heritage Lottery Fund, which has stringent mechanisms for monitoring programs of research, information gathering, entry into the Database (according to the Council of Europe Core Data Standard), storage and retrieval, archiving and dissemination etc. Research in progress may not be published until completion. Source: Sharman Kadish, Project Director, Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage in the UK & Ireland.
OTHER USEFUL WEBSITES:
  1. Jewish Community information: http://www.haruth.com/JewsUK.html [October 2000]
  2. London's East End: http://www.ibiblio.org/yiddish/Places/London [October 2000]
General Early History of the Jews of London

     Provincial Jewish communities were not permitted their own burial grounds until 1177 and were dependent upon London for Jewish burial. Later, in the 12th and 13th centuries, such provincial communities as Bristol, Bury St. Edmunds, Gloucester, Lincoln, Norwich, Oxford and Winchester acquired burial grounds. Only 60 years after the Barkergate burial ground purchase (one hundred years and two days after the mass suicide of the York community at Clifford's Tower), the Jews of England were still too over-taxed and impoverished. Not considered a viable asset to King Edward I, therefore, he signed the infamous Edict of Banishment on March 18, 1290.
     Post-Resettlement: In March 1656, Oliver Cromwell accepted a petition allowing the Sephardic Marrano community freedom of worship and the right to acquire a burial ground. This semi-overt community established its first synagogue in London on Creechurch Lane in December 1656, acquiring its own cemetery land after a few months. Forty years later, Benjamin Levy and other synagogue elders succeeded in purchasing a burial ground for Ashkenazim. The Bevis Marks Synagogue, built by the Spanish and Portuguese community in 1701, was one of the first synagogues of the Resettlement Period and was followed by the Great Synagogue at Dukes Place, erected in 1722 and rebuilt in 1790. The breakaway Hambro Synagogue was established in 1726, and the New and Western Synagogues were erected about 1761. Each synagogue controlled its own burial ground and burial registers.
 

London Burial Registers

     Each synagogue was responsible for its own burials and registers until 1872. Although some burial grounds ceased to serve specific synagogues exclusively almost forty years earlier, several kept their own registers until the 1900s. Many synagogues joined umbrella organisations, while still maintaining their individual identify. The largest such organisation was the Union of Synagogues later known as The United Synagogue (established in 1870), which embraced the Great Synagogue at Dukes Place, the New Synagogue, the Hambro and others. A similar umbrella organization for Sephardic Jews included the Bevis Marks and others in London and the provinces, while the Federation of Synagogues covered most of the smaller Ashkenazi places of worship. Later, the Adath Yisroel and the Reform and Liberal movements formed their own organizations, each with separate cemeteries.
     The United Synagogue Burial Society assumed responsibility for burials from the individual synagogues within the umbrella organization. It covers most of the burials in the Orthodox Ashkenazi community after 1872. Cecil Roth catalogued many of the pre-1879 vital records of the three original constituent synagogues. These were published in his Archives of the United Synagogue (1930). So many additional records have been acquired in recent years, however, that this data is now obsolete. Charles Tucker, archivist and record researcher for the United Synagogue and the Court of the Chief Rabbi, reports that the compilation of a completely revised catalogue of this material is currently in hand. (Charles Tucker, archivist of the LONDON BETH DIN, 735 High Road, N. Finchley, London N12 0US)
     
     The Hambro Synagogue: Harold Lewin is a retired physicist living in Jerusalem is currently working on the transcription from microfilm and indexing of births, marriages and deaths from the old Hambro Synagogue registers. See: "Older London Burial Records and Sites" by Harold Lewin, Avotaynu, Fall 1991. After a joint plan for burials was created in 1835, some burial records of the New and the Hambro Synagogues were placed in the large burial registers belonging to the Great Synagogue at Dukes Place. Conversely, some Great Synagogue records found their way into the Hambro registers. The Hambro Synagogue maintained its own burial register from 1770 to 1872, including the following:

Title Period covered
Register of Births and Burials 1770-1843
Register of Burials 1788-1813
Register of Burials 1843-1859
Register of Burials 1862-1863
Register of Burials 1866
Register of Burials 1859-1872
Register of Burial, Privileged Members 1813-1851
Register of Burials, Strangers 1860-1863
Register of Burials, Strangers 1852-1867
Monument Inscriptions, Strangers and Children* 1863-1872
Returns of Burials and Marriages 1860-1870
Burials of Poor Strangers 1862-1863
Burials of Poor Strangers 1866-1867

* Note: This title is misleading because the register actually comprises the following records: Strangers and Children, Non- members, Privileged Members and Tombstones (names only; no inscriptions).

     The Great Synagogue (Dukes Place): Burial registers cover the period 1791-1872, but no gravesites are given. The following records pertaining to the Great Synagogue are included in Vol. 27 of the Hambro Registers:

Great Synagogue Burials 1864-1866
Great Synagogue Burial Expenses 1863-1864
Indexes to burials 1858-1871
Burials are in two separate volumes 1871-1889
 
     The New Synagogue: The burial registers for the New Synagogue section of the West Ham Cemetery cover the period 1858~1871. Registers are not indexed and no gravesites are given. This synagogue owned part of the Brady Street Cemetery [http://www.ibiblio.org/yiddish/Places/London/london.htm#bradys]. The United Synagogue has a Burial Register for Privileged Members and one for Strangers, each covering the period 1796~1858, that may relate to New Synagogue's burials.

Hazards Facing Researchers:

  1. There is a fairly low probability that the researcher's ancestors could have afforded a headstone, and even if their financial situation had so permitted, there is an even lower probability that the stone has survived two or three centuries of English climate. Few of the early Resettlement Jewish population would have ordered a granite headstone, the only kind that may have survived.
  2. Those buried in the Hoxton Cemetery have been exhumed and reinterred in unmarked graves elsewhere.
  3. Several of the disused Jewish cemeteries have suffered severe vandalism; bombs during the London Blitz in World War II damaged others.
  4. Burial registers seldom yield the name of the cemetery where the deceased was buried. When it does, the location of the grave usually is not included. In addition, many of the old cemeteries lack plot plans. Although each London synagogue kept its own burial registers before 1835, the sexton or secretary of the burial society rarely recorded the place-either cemetery or plot number of the burial. There were few Jewish burial grounds at that time, and sextons knew where the graves were; needless to say, they were neither cognizant of, nor interested in, the difficulties to be faced by future researchers. The records that have not fallen victim to enemy bombing or dampness still exist and so do most of the cemeteries; the difficulty lies in finding the link between the burial record and the specific cemetery.
  5. Some fairly typical notes in the Hambro registers, probably intended at the time to serve as guides to the secretaries of the burial societies, illustrate the problem. Note that the name of the actual cemetery is never mentioned. For example:
  6. In very few instances are precise burial locations given. Even when the deceased is mentioned in a pre-1835 Member's Burial Register, this is no guarantee of burial in ground belonging to the synagogue. The registers of the Great Synagogue seem to have been utilized subsequently for a comprehensive record of burials, while those names entered in the regular registers of the new and the Hambro Synagogues were usually of members. However, as shown earlier, the Hambro also maintained separate registers for burials of strangers and burials of poor strangers. After 1835, when the joint Ashkenazi communal plan began working, most interments occurred in cemeteries belonging to the Great Synagogue, Dukes Place, although the burial was still recorded by the congregation of the deceased. No plans of these old cemeteries exist showing the position of individual graves, and only a few of the headstones still have legible inscriptions. Nevertheless, in spite of all these drawbacks, the burial record of a family member probably will yield useful information.
 
THE CEMETERIES
 

REFERENCE BOOKS

See Section on London for listing of Reference Books on the London Jewish Communities & Cemeteries on JCR-UK

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Revised Tuesday, July 01, 2008 08:38:50 David Shulman