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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
At the Synagogue the Shamash Maurice, part Beadle, part
Curator and wholly entertaining man will explain the life
of the synagogue and answer any questions put. The
worshippers at Bevis Marks are Sephardi Jews, a general
term referring to descendants of Jewish settlers who lived
in the Iberian Peninsula until the Spanish Inquisition. The
word Sephardi means Spanish in Hebrew and Bevis Marks
is officially called the Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue.
Most Jewish people in England until the 19th century were
Sephardic and it was Ashkenazi Jews (Hebrew for German
and applying to Jewish people from France, Germany and
Eastern Europe) who came to London in the 1800s often
fleeing from pogroms in Eastern Europe. The new arrivals
spoke the Hebrew-German language Yiddish and they
congregated in Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Ashkenazi
shuls or synagogues sprang up, the earliest in Sandys Row
set up in the 1850s by 50 Dutch families - it’s still there
and we pass it on our way into Spitalfields. These streets
once thronged with Jewish cabinet makers, tailors, shoe
smiths and cigarette makers. The Jewish East End
produced many well known businessmen of living
memory like Tesco’s founder Jack Cohen, Vidal Sassoon
and Lord Sugar and any number of entertainers and show
business folk like Bud Flanaghan, band leader Joe Loss,
playwright Harold Pinter, Alma Cogan, Lionel Blair and
the late and lovely Claire Rayner. Most Jewish East
Enders have moved out to the suburbs but they have left
behind lots of visual clues to a very vibrant life that your
expert guide is going to pick out for you. This is a very
photogenic part of London so do encourage your members
to bring their cameras.
For lunch we’ll stop at Old Spitalfields Market. Once
the fruit and flower market today there are market stalls,
every day, all under cover and selling new and vintage
garments, collectibles and near antiques. Plus there are
boutique-type shops selling designer clothes, jewellery
and furniture and a good choice of pubs, cafes and
restaurants. The guides say that our groups always love
Spitalfields - it’s new, somewhere that your members
haven't been and it’s interesting to explore.
In the afternoon we visit the elegantly refurbished
Jewish Museum in Camden Town. Exhibits include the
oldest English Hanukkah lamp in England (left). This is
known as the Lindo Lamp and it was made by a London
silversmith in 1709 for the wedding of Elias and Rachel
Lindo at the Bevis Marks Synagogue. The museum
also displays the ritual purification pool, the Milk Street
Mikvah, which was found by Museum of London
archeologists in the old Jewish quarter of the City of
London near to the Guildhall. It had been built in the
home of the Crespin family way back in the 1200s.
This is a very thoughtful and erudite museum with an
impressive collection of Jewish ceremonial art and
artifacts that tell the story of the Jewish people in
England including wonderful old photographs of life
in the Jewish East End.
In addition to the permanent displays the museum
invests a lot of time, money and effort in temporary
exhibitions and from Spring 2014 they will be showing
a First World War exhibition. There’s a café on site at
the Jewish Museum where you can buy refreshments
before heading home at 4.45pm.
This is a walking tour designed with older folk in
mind. We have cut the walking by up to a third to
make it accessible for more groups. This tour is
available Sundays to Thursdays throughout the year
with the exception of Jewish holidays which we can
advise you on.
Adults: £23.50 Seniors: £21.50
Coach Mileage: 5
We use the Olympic running track
to represent how far you will walk
on our trips. Once around the track
is 400 metres (about 440 yards).
This tour is a 3.5 on that scale meaning a total of about
1500 yards throughout the day.