Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 26, 2022

You never quite know what you'll find if you dig deep enough in a place as steeped in history as Surrey. In 1996, renovation work at the Waterstones bookshop on Guildford High Street revealed a beautiful medieval chamber, believed to have been buried for 700 years. Subsequent analysis from archaeologists suggested that the room was part of a Jewish synagogue from about 1180, which would make it the oldest synagogue in the UK.

According to the travel website Atlas Obscura, the chamber itself "was ornately decorated with four columns, niches, a stone bench surrounding the whole chamber, and there is also evidence of a tiled floor. This all suggests that it was a high-status site."

The stone steps leading down to the room's remains seem to show a place that kept a low profile, which would make sense because Jewish people in 12th-century Britain faced horrendous oppression. It is likely that the synagogue was abandoned when King Edward I started banishing Jews from English towns in the 1270s.

READ MORE: How Surrey village rid its 17th century reputation of being most dangerous in England

The oldest continuously used synagogue in the country is the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, which was built in the late 1600s. To have found a synagogue in Guildford that pre-dates that site by around 500 years was a discovery of enormous historical significance.

Speaking at the time of its discovery, Rabbi Alex Goldberg, Dean of Religious Life at the University of Surrey, said: "It is significant because it looks like it's one of the oldest synagogues, or remnants of a synagogue, in western Europe. It also reveals religious history in the heart of Surrey in the 12th and 13th century."

A few historians have cast doubt on whether the chamber really was part of a synagogue. It was unusual in the 12th-century for such a building to be made from stone, leading some to surmise that it was actually a townhouse of some kind. While members of the excavation team have said that the building's most likely use was as a synagogue, it has never been conclusively proven and may never be.

Most people passing by on the high street today would see no evidence of its existence, although it is commemorated by the Waterstones branch now standing on the site. Despite its low profile, it remains one of the most important sites in the history of Judaism in the UK, and it lies right in the heart of our county town.

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Originally posted here:

Guildford Waterstones bookshop has the UK's oldest synagogue buried beneath it - Surrey Live

Category: Synagogue
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