Bevis Marks is a street in the City of London in Aldgate Ward. In the street is the Bevis Marks Synagogue, the oldest in England, built in 1679; and its restaurant.

Originally known as Bewesmarkes (1407), Bevys Marke (1450), Bevers-market (1630), or Beausmarkes next London Wall^[1]. The antiquarian, Stow believes the name to derive from the Abbots of Bury (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk), in whose ownership the area was until the Dissolution. At that time, their possessions were passed to Sir Thomas Heneage, a friend of Henry VIII and gentleman of the privy chamber^[2]. He is commemorated by nearby Heneage Lane.

References

Coordinates: 51°30′54″N 0°04′45″W / 51.5150°N 0.0792°W / 51.5150; -0.0792

== The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Bevis Marks, London ==


Built between 1699 and 1701, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Bevis Marks, London, was the second synagogue to be erected in England after the Sephardic Jewish resettlement of 1656, and a direct successor to the original resettlement synagogue close by on Creechurch Lane. Often referred to only as ‘Bevis Marks’, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue is in fact situated off the public street in Heneage Lane and stands outside the boundaries of the City of London, where Jews were withheld rights to own property. Proposals for a new synagogue came under consideration from 1694 onwards, but only on 24 June 1699 was this site acquired under the terms of a 99-year lease from the landowners, Dame Anne Poyntz and Sir Thomas Poyntz. It was to be a further half-century before, in 1749, the congregation purchased the freehold.


The new synagogue was to be built by Joseph Avis, a Quaker carpenter who had worked on the Merchant Taylor’s Hall and on Christopher Wren’s St Bride’s, Fleet Street, where the synagogue’s supervisors could have viewed his work. A building contract was signed with Avis on 12 February 1699 for the agreed sum of £2,650, payable in instalments. This document includes some detailed specifications regarding the dimensions and materials for the building and was annexed to a ‘model’, now lost. Although records survive from 1694-5, detailing two purchases of a ‘modelo pa una Esnoga’ from a ‘Mr Ransy’, it is not known whether either of these models provided the final design. We do know, however, that Avis supervised the building himself from 1699 to 1701, leading a team of skilled English craftsmen whose names are recorded in the Bevis Marks archives: Bricklayer, John Phillips; Joiner, John Sims; Carpenter, Thomas Clark; Smith, Thomas Robinson; Stonemason, James Paget; Plumber, John Lingar; Decorators, John Dodson and John ‘the Painter’; and Plasterer, Andrea Hat.


Bevis Marks is a rectangular building, 80 ft by 50 ft, of red brick with Portland stone dressings, a plain plinth, moulded platband between the storeys, a stone cornice and plain parapet. The main entrance is at the west with a central square-headed door-case, moulded architrave and panelled key-block, bearing the date of the building. Set above is a cornice resting on stone brackets and a segmental pediment and a Hebrew inscription in the tympanum. The north and south elevations both have five windows in each storey similar to those on the west front, those on the upper level being all round-headed, those on the ground floor being segmental. The east wall has windows in the upper storey like those at the west, but the lower wall, behind the Ehal (Ark), is blank except for an opening to the heating cellar. The synagogue has a hipped roof, now slated, though originally tiled.


The interior of the prayer hall, designed for around 400 men, is plastered and painted in cream It is approached through a small panelled vestibule with smaller side enclosures at north and south. The generous, deeply recessed, clear leaded windows flood the interior with natural light, animating the woodwork with reflections and highlights. The ceiling is flat with a plaster cornice and a series of rosettes, from seven of which are suspended large brass ball chandeliers, providing light to the raised Tevah (reading platform). The women’s gallery, designed for around 160 women, runs around the north, south and west sides, supported by twelve Tuscan columns of marbleized timber and interlocked piers at the north-west and south-west corners. The main staircase to the gallery at the south west has a close-moulded string, turned balusters and square newels.


A sum approaching £5,000 was spent on furnishing the hall in a substantial and elegant manner conforming to the liturgical arrangement of the Sephardi Jewish tradition. The wooden Ehal placed against the east wall provides a powerful focal point and resembles a contemporary reredos, with its two storeys connected by scrolls giving a resemblance to a late-Renaissance church façade. Behind the brass-hinged doors lie the sacred scrolls of the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, written in Hebrew on parchment. The present silver Sanctuary Lamp, burning perpetually over the Ehal, was presented by Edward Foligno in 1876 and is evidently a replacement of an earlier example, now lost. Ten brass candlesticks complement the light provided by the chandeliers. The Banca (warden’s pew), with a canopy-like cornice on slim posts, is set up at the northern wall beneath the gallery. The Tevah, which has spindle shaped banisters, stands well toward the rear of the hall, close to the western aisle, on a slightly raised platform. Benches are set lengthwise between the Tevah and the Ehal and along the walls below the gallery. A number of these oak benches were brought from the previous synagogue on Creechurch Lane. The middle area of the hall remains free.


A number of changes have been made since 1701. The schools and orphanage (Nos. 1 and 2 Heneage Lane) no longer exist and the site of the last mikveh of the congregation, together with the ‘bathwomam’s house’ (No 2 1/2 Heneage Lane) was leased for redevelopment in 1899. On the synagogue itself, the original window panes have been altered, two steps have been added to the Bimah (podium) (ca. 1730), and the vestry rebuilt. Doors were added to the Banca and Rabbi seats in 1787 and to the choir stalls in c.1830. The ceiling underwent minor repair in the nineteenth century, while electric lighting was installed on the sidewalls in 1929 to complement the existing candlelight. Some structural restoration was necessary and successful following the explosion of an IRA bomb on 10 April 1992. Notwithstanding these minor changes, Bevis Marks stands as it did in 1701. As the country’s oldest extant synagogue, the building continues to attract attention for its critical place in Britain’s Jewish architectural heritage.


Source Material

The extensive archives of Bevis Marks are preserved at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, Maida Vale, London. In addition to miscellaneous material, these archives include detailed records of the congregation’s history from 1663 onwards in the form of minute books of the Mahamad and the Elders, as well as the accounts, listing the congregation’s income and expenditure. Full circumcision and marriage records are preserved from 1679 and cemetery records date from 1733. The archive therefore covers much of the congregation’s history whilst based at the synagogue in Creechurch Lane and then continues uninterrupted through and beyond the move to Bevis Marks in 1701.


A significant proportion of the material outlined above has been published. The earliest records and accounts from the period 1663-1681 are available in translation from the original Spanish and Portuguese in Lionel Barnett, El Libro de los Acuerdos. The same period is also covered by Lionel Barnett, Bevis Marks Records, Part I, which runs from the earliest times up until c.1800, ‘the whole…fittingly illustrated by plates reproducing the most important and interesting documents’. Summaries of all the surviving marriage contracts solemnised within the congregation from 1690-1837 are available in Lionel Barnett, Bevis Marks Records, Part II, while the same for the period 1837-1901 are available in G.H. Whitehill, Bevis Marks Records, Part III.


From this bulk of material, a number of documents are particularly relevant to architectural analysis. One such document is the agreement reached with a carpenter, William Pope, for the enlarging of the old synagogue at Creechurch Lane, dated 18 May 1674. Of similar interest are the accounts of 1694-5 which reveal yet further concern over the congregation’s accommodation evident in two payments made by the Mahamad to a ‘Mr Ransy’, the first for preparing ‘un modelo pa una Esnoga’ and the second for a further ‘modelo’. Most significant of all in relation to the construction of Bevis Marks is the final agreement signed with Joseph Avis dated 12 February 1699. It is this document which contains detailed stipulations for the dimensions and materials for the new synagogue and to which a model was originally annexed. A further series of documents record the congregation’s financial contributions to the building of Bevis Marks and its subsequent furnishing.


More detailed research into the congregation’s membership and development may provide a better indication of the intentions of those who commissioned Bevis Marks. In particular, a greater knowledge of later Dutch immigration and influence in the community by the 1690s would allow for a better assessment of the extent to which the London congregation looked to the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam as a model for Bevis Marks. To this end, the marriage records containing names and occupations of the congregational membership may be complemented with a census of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in London carried out by Abraham Israel Zagache, most probably at the request of the Mahamad. This document is noted in a list of the congregation’s property compiled in 1689-90 and is now held at the Library of Ets Haim in Amsterdam.


Bevis Marks was reviewed by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and listed as a building ‘most worthy of preservation’ in 1929. The detailed report was printed in the Survey of the Ancient and Historical Monuments of London: Volume IV: The City and subsequently reprinted by the congregation in 1930. The inspector’s notes, sketches, and photographs are held in the National Monuments Record, Swindon, signed A J Phillips, and dated June 1928, shelf mark BB95.


-- 16:55, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Further Reading: Barnett, Lionel. D., (ed.) Bevis Marks Records, Part I: The Early History of the congregation from the Beginning until 1800 (Oxford, 1940; Barnett, Lionel (ed.) Bevis Marks Records, Part II: Abstracts of the Ketubot or Marriage Contracts of the Congregation from the earliest times until 1837 (Oxford, 1949); Barnett, Lionel, (trans). El Libro de los Acuerdos: Being the Records and Accompts of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of London from 1663-1681 (Oxford, 1931); Gaster, Moses, History of the Ancient Synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews 1701-1901 (London, 1901); Krinsky, Carol. H., Synagogues of Europe: Architecture, History, Meaning (New York, 1985); Kadish, Sharman (ed.) Building Jerusalem: Jewish Architecture in Britain (London, 1996) Kadish, Sharman, Bevis Marks Synagogue (Swindon, 2001).