Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Chatham Jewish Burial Ground, attached to Chatham Memorial Synagogue. The burial ground dates from the 1780 at the latest, and was enlarged in 1868-1870, when the synagogue was rebuilt.

Monument Types

• CEMETERY (Post Medieval to Unknown - 1780 AD?)

Full description

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Summary
Chatham Jewish Burial Ground, attached to Chatham Memorial Synagogue. The burial ground dates from the 1780 at the latest, and was enlarged in 1868-1870, when the synagogue was rebuilt.

Reasons for Designation
The Jewish Burial Ground at Chatham Memorial Synagogue is registered at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* established in the latter part of the C18, this is one of only thirty Georgian Jewish burial grounds in the country, and one of the earliest; * the burial ground and its memorials reflect the history of one of England’s earliest provincial communities, established in the early C18; * the range of tombs and inscriptions demonstrates the social mix of those commemorated, and the increasing Anglicisation of the community; * the co-location of burial ground and synagogue, contrary to usual Jewish practice, and the mitigating physical separation provided is illustrative of the constraints placed upon the immigrant community.

Group value:

* with the Synagogue of 1868-1870, and with the 1865 tomb of Lazarus Magnus, dedicatee of the synagogue.

History
Chatham has one of the earliest provincial Jewish communities in England, growing in importance during the C18 and early C19. By the mid-C19 there were about 60 Jewish families residing in Chatham and its neighbourhood.

It is probable that Chatham’s Jews worshipped in one another’s houses until the mid-C18. However, a document of 1770 mentions a tenement belonging to St Bartholomew’s Hospital being sublet for use as a synagogue; the lease of the tenement had been acquired in 1766. By 1780, the building was described as being ‘lately rebuilt’. Further mention of the synagogue and a second tenement – possibly the minister’s house – is made in documents of 1787 and 1808, which name the lessees and their occupations, including a silversmith, a chapman and a tobacconist, as well as salesmen and shopkeepers. The early synagogue was described in Samuel Bagshaw’s ‘History, Gazetteer & Directory of Kent’ (1847) as ‘a small building of brick and wood about one hundred years old’. The building is said to have been reminiscent of wooden Ashkenazi synagogues in Poland. Historic mapping suggests that the building was added to over time, with an extension appearing to the west at some time between 1842 and 1866.

The date of the establishment of the burial ground is not known, but it is thought likely that it was created at the time the synagogue was established at the site, or that it may have preceded the synagogue; burial space was considered to be of the first importance for Jewish immigrant communities, and burial grounds were frequently established before synagogue buildings. It has been suggested that the discovery of an inscribed stone commemorating a Jewish woman and dated 1747 in the foundations of an old theatre indicates there may have been an earlier Jewish cemetery about half a mile away, but from at least the 1780s all the area’s Jewish burials were conducted in the Chatham burial ground.

In 1865 a member of the congregation, wealthy coal merchant and naval agent Simon Magnus, whose family had been associated with the synagogue since the early C19, purchased the freehold of the synagogue and burial ground to the south, along with several adjoining cottages, in order to build a new synagogue together with a minister’s house. The synagogue was a gift to the community in commemoration of the donor’s only son Captain Lazarus Simon Magnus who had died prematurely on 7th January 1865, aged 39; a condition of the synagogue’s deed of trust is that his memorial within the burial ground should remain always visible from the High Street. The new, larger building was sited to the north-east of the earlier building, and the burial ground expanded northwards to fill the space released by the old synagogue. Built in 1868-1870 to the design of London Jewish architect Hyman Henry Collins, the new synagogue was consecrated in 1870 by the Chief Rabbi, Nathan Marcus Adler. The synagogue was entered from the High Street, with the minister’s house immediately to the east; surviving plans within the synagogue show the architect’s conception of the two buildings framing the monument, with a walkway to the burial ground between the buildings.

In the later 1960s or early 1970s the minister’s house was demolished and in 1972 a new centenary hall was completed linking with the synagogue to the east. Serving as a youth and community centre or centenary hall, the extension was designed by Halpern & Partners; Hilary Anthony Halpern’s family had been associated with the synagogue since the late C19. The extension obscured the view of the Lazarus Magnus memorial from the High Street, and an Act of Parliament was obtained through the Charity Commissioners to vary the trust, on the understanding that the memorial would be visible through the largely glazed structure. Since the construction of the extension, access to the burial ground has been via an alleyway running to the west of the new synagogue, dating from the C18 if not earlier.

The burial ground lies immediately to the south and south-east of the synagogue: the establishment of a synagogue and burial ground in such close proximity was extremely rare. Despite the high degree of respect accorded to the deceased - Jewish burial grounds are regarded as sacred places, where the deceased must remain undisturbed in perpetuity - a fundamental belief in the impurity of the dead underpins many of the customs relating to death and burial defined in ‘halakhah’ (Jewish religious law). The Cohanim (hereditary priests), must take particular care to avoid contact with the dead, or walk amongst the graves in a cemetery. In general Jewish burial grounds are isolated from residential areas with their religious and social amenities, but circumstances may have made this impossible at Chatham. According to Jewish law, a minimum distance of four amot (just under two metres) should be kept between synagogue and burial area; historic mapping indicates that the burial ground closely adjoined the original synagogue, though a wall appears to have run between the two, which would have provided a mitigating division. Following the construction of the new synagogue, a separation of about two and a half metres was left between this and the burial area. Today, Chatham Memorial Synagogue is generally considered to be the only synagogue in Britain with an attached cemetery; although there are two other known examples of a synagogue standing adjacent to a cemetery, in both cases the synagogue was established next to the pre-existing cemetery at a much later date, rather than there being a historic connection between the two elements, as at Chatham.

The last burial took place in 1982 and the cemetery is now full; today burials take place in the Jewish section of Chatham Cemetery. A survey of the headstones and their inscriptions was undertaken in 1975 by Nicholas de Lange and Julia Neuberger, and resumed in 1999-2000 by Martyn Webster following a project to clear the undergrowth. In 2000 the cemetery was restored following a spate of vandalism, but many of the headstones were not re-erected since relatives of the deceased could not be found. The cemetery was the subject of vandalism again in 2019. The name Chatham Intra is associated with an area of sloping land extending down to the river Medway that links the historic settlements of Rochester and Chatham. This middle ground was split administratively between the two towns, straddled three parishes and was traversed by an ancient routeway running between London and Canterbury and onward to Dover, of Roman or earlier origin. Development here began with the construction of the Hospital of St Bartholomew for people with leprosy in 1078 which was under the control of Rochester although located just outside it. More concerted building along the routeway only got underway in the late C17. This came both from the west, as a suburban extension of Rochester, and from the east, as part of Chatham’s rapid growth following the establishment of a naval dockyard in the late C16. Thereafter the fortunes of town and Chatham Intra were closely tied to the military, as a garrison town and naval base serving the needs of soldiers, sailors and marines, until the late C20.

From the C18 the area began to develop an increasingly commercial and industrial character, including ship-building, brewing and the movement of goods, notably coal and timber, encouraging the building of wharves and piers out into the river Medway. The impetus for growth also came from the railways, which arrived at Chatham Intra in the 1850s. Redevelopment along the High Street was also the consequence of major fires in the early C19 followed by road widening initiatives and landowners seeking to build more densely later in the century. The result was a flourishing High Street that supported a lively mixture of shops, theatres, cinemas, public houses and hotels up to the mid-C20. But this was followed by a sustained period of decline due to wider social change and the loss of military facilities. However, despite some losses the area retains a considerable amount of historic fabric and an urban grain still shaped by historical patterns of growth.

Details
DEVELOPMENT AND EXTENT: the burial ground area shown on the 1866 Ordnance Survey map is thought to be the same as that leased in 1780, and comprised a rectangular space approximately 16 x 28 metres immediately to the south of the old synagogue. The new synagogue which replaced the older building in 1868-1870 was constructed further to the north-east, and the site of the old synagogue was therefore freed for burials; the burial ground therefore extended further to the north, and now covers an area approximately 23 x 28 metres, rising towards the south.

BOUNDARIES AND APPROACHES: prior to the demolition of the minister/rabbi’s house, and its replacement in 1971 by the extension to the synagogue, the cemetery was approached by a broad walkway between the synagogue and the house. Access is now provided by the alleyway running to the west of the synagogue, entered via a wrought-iron gate and stone pier, forming part of the sequence of piers and railings separating the synagogue site from the High Street. The alleyway was probably the one mentioned in the document of 1770, and is thought to have provided access to buildings to the south of the High Street, including the old synagogue. Historic mapping indicates that this route continued to provide secondary access to the burial ground following the construction of the new synagogue, being widened to the east by the replacement by the synagogue of earlier buildings. The western part, which is included in the registration, has a cobbled surface, now bounded by a low stepped stone wall separating the cobbled pathway from a grassed area, which is not included. The alleyway is bounded to the west by the flank wall of a late-C19 building fronting the High Street, and to the east by the west elevation of the synagogue.

Within the burial ground itself, the western boundary is formed by a multi-phase brick wall. The northern stretch is in two parts, with a straight joint between them: to the north is what appears to be a C19 section, in blackened brick, and to the south is what appears to be an older red-brick section. Both sections have been raised in height, at different times. Further south, the wall has been rebuilt against a neighbouring building in the late C20 or early C21, with a tiled coping; south of that is another rebuilt section. The burial ground is bounded to the south by a section of the northern boundary of the C19 St Bartholomew’s Hospital site. The building bordering the burial ground is a Classical red-brick block (being converted to residential use in 2022) which stands on a terrace above the burial ground, with two wings projecting to the edge of the boundary. Between the wings are red-brick walls, ramped towards the wings, and buttressed. At the south-east corner, the southern wall meets an earlier red-brick wall, laid in Flemish bond with a brick coping, and ramped to the south, with offset buttresses; this wall appears to extend to the northern boundary of the synagogue site. The wall may date to the C18, and was probably built in connection with the garden immediately to the east, formerly belonging to the brewery mansion opposite (National Heritage List for England 1320136) within which is the castellated water tower (NHLE 1336149) built in the early 1800s to serve the brewery in Hulkes Lane (NHLE 1481112) and the mansion, and later used by St Bartholomew’s as a mortuary; the garden’s northern boundary wall and railings are listed at Grade II (LE1299352). The wall has areas of rebuilding, and has been raised in a number of places, notably against a late-C19 building extending alongside the eastern side of the wall and crossing the northern boundary of the burial ground.

The burial area stops about 2.5 metres to the south of the synagogue, and at the western end extends north-westwards at an angle to include an area to the south of the approach from the High Street; this north-western area appears to bear some relationship to the later western section of the old synagogue, and is included in the registration. The northern edges of the northernmost tomb enclosures are linked by a low stone border, currently in poor condition, with some sections missing, or buried, probably intended to mark the separation of the burial area from the synagogue. This border continues to enclose the north-western area. Between this boundary and the synagogue is a steep grassed bank, which forms the northern extent of the designated area. (To the east an area of lawn separates the cemetery proper and the circa 1970 synagogue annexe; this annexe now provides access to the burial ground from within the synagogue.)

PRINCIPAL BUILDINGS: to the north of the burial ground stands the 1868-1870 synagogue by HH Collins, which is listed at Grade II*. Commissioned by Simon Magnus, the building is dedicated to the memory of Magnus’s son Lazarus Magnus, whose monument stands in the burial ground (see below). Faced with Kentish ragstone, with Bath stone dressings, and red Mansfield stone columns to the wide entrance porch, the synagogue is in an ornate and eclectic style combining Romanesque and Byzantine elements, with a large wheel window within the central gable, a tower to the west, and a lower gable to the east, containing an arcade of round-headed windows lighting the committee room. The south end, facing the burial ground is polygonal, each face being gabled, with round-headed window openings beneath the gables. To the east is H Halpern’s circa 1970 annexe, providing a communal hall running eastwards from the synagogue: this is a timber structure with glazed panels beneath a zigzag roof. The intention was that the glazing would ensure Magnus’s stipulation that his son’s memorial should always be visible from the High Street continued to be met.

LAYOUT AND MONUMENTS: the cemetery has never been the subject of a complex layout design: there are no internal divisions and no paths are depicted on historic maps or evident today, though the recent covering of gravel may have obscured any pathways. The layout was clearly intended to maximise burial space, with graves in straight rows. Jewish graves often face towards Jerusalem – east or south-east in Britain, but there is no religious obligation for them to do so, and the tradition is frequently not followed in Anglo-Jewish cemeteries, as here, where the graves face north towards the synagogue. There are gaps in the rows, where headstones have been lost. The sequence of burial seems to have begun at the southern boundary, where the oldest headstones are located. The addition of new graves progressed northwards in roughly chronological order, except where spaces had been reserved for family members. A notable feature is a brick platform, or terrace, about 14.5 metres long and about 3 metres wide, now in a dilapidated condition, adjacent to the back wall of the cemetery. This may be an example of the so-called ‘upper ground’ described by John Mills in his 1853 volume ‘The British Jews’, in which the author indicates that a raised section was frequently created for the burial of privileged members, together with those who paid for their plots.

The burial ground contains approximately 200 memorials, the majority being upright headstones representing the Ashkenazi tradition; some headstones now lie flat on the ground. The earliest decipherable headstone is dated to about 1782; the inscriptions on the earlier stones are generally eroded and largely illegible, but the majority of headstones towards the rear of the burial ground are thought to date from the late C18 and early C19. These have round, shouldered or pointed tops; the graves do not have kerbs, but a few have foot stones. Whilst the Jewish teaching of equality in death is reflected here in the memorials, which are generally of fairly uniform size, and modest design, there are some more elaborate Victorian examples, of types found in Christian cemeteries: some memorials are in Gothic styles, and there are obelisks, broken columns, chest tombs and draped urns. Kerbs surround many of the Victorian graves, often supplemented by ornamental iron railings, largely now rusted and collapsed. Victorian forms of memorial continued into the first two decades of the C20, following which the models used continued to follow fashions found elsewhere: Art Nouveau and Art Deco influences are seen towards the northern part of the burial ground, with increased use of granite and marble in addition to Portland stone.

The inscriptions on the earliest headstones are entirely in Hebrew; around the mid-C19 details are included in English in small lettering below the Hebrew texts, and thereafter English appears increasingly, though nearly all the headstones include some Hebrew. Many graves bear the traditional abbreviation based on Samuel, 25:29, ‘May his/her soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life’ in Hebrew lettering. Jewish funerary symbolism is not abundant within the burial ground, but examples do occur: the felled tree indicating a life cut short is used on several mid-C19 headstones, whilst the open hands making the Birkat Cohanim or priestly blessing, denoting the grave of a Cohen, is found on at least two early-C20 stones; the Star of David occurs on a number of memorials dating from the 1920s onwards. The inscriptions represent a rich source of evidence for the history of Chatham’s Jewish population; in addition to names, dates and family information, some biographical detail provides evidence of professions, countries of origin and causes of death, with certain families being particularly well represented, most notably the Magnus, Levy, Isaacs and Alexander families.

The most prominent monument, dominating the front of the cemetery, marks the grave of Lazarus Magnus (1824-1865); as noted above, Lazarus Magnus was the dedicatee of the synagogue built by his father Simon Magnus, who stipulated that the monument should always be visible from the High Street. The monument, by Edward James Physick (1829-1906) consists of a heavily draped urn on a pedestal with a tall stepped cap. On the north side of the pedestal is an arched panel depicting lightning striking a tree, signifying that the life of the deceased was abruptly curtailed; portions of the relief have been lost through vandalism. The pedestal stands on three graduated blocks, bearing the very detailed inscription to the north: the upper tablet, in Hebrew and English, provides his details; the middle tablet describes his personal qualities, his commitment to Judaism, and his energetic benevolence. The bottom panel describes his career: Lazarus was a member of the synagogue management board, Vice Chairman of directors of the Chatham Railway and three times Mayor of Queenborough (England's first Jewish provincial mayor), Sheppey. He was also one of the earliest professing Jews to receive a military commission, having founded and been made captain of the 4th corps of the 1st Kent Artillery Volunteers in 1859; the inscription observes that ‘no more affecting tribute could have been paid to his high moral worth and to the regard in which he was held, than that offered by the officers, non-commissioned officers, and privates of this corps in the cemetery on the day when his honoured remains were consigned to their final resting place.’ The monument is enclosed by a chain-link fence strung between stone piers on a granite kerb, the northern edge of which is in line with the boundary of the burial area ; within the memorial’s enclosure are two ledger tombs, one marking the interment of Magnus, and the others those of Lazarus’s sister Jane (d 1872) and her husband Henry Jacob Nathan (d 1879). Stone steps to the north of the memorial serve as a reminder of the former approach from the High Street. The graves of Simon Magnus (d 1875) and his wife Sara (d 1850) are marked by a pair of Portland stone obelisks within an ornate iron railed enclosure towards the rear of the cemetery, almost directly in line with their son’s memorial. The headstone of Simon Magnus's father Lazarus (d 1821), who established the family in Chatham, is also within the cemetery.

A further group of notable Victorian memorials are those of the Levy family, situated on a granite platform occupying the south-western corner of the burial ground, partly on the site of the ‘higher ground’. The three chest tombs commemorate Sir Isaac Levy of Rochester (d 1840), a dealer in marine stores, his wife Sarah (d 1853) and their son John Lewis Levy (d 1871); John was a corn merchant and became Mayor of Rochester in 1860 and 1865. The burial ground contains the tomb of a Joshua Alexander, possibly the same Joshua Alexander who was amongst the lessees of the synagogue in 1807. Towards the rear of the cemetery is a triple headstone commemorating three Alexander children who died in 1847. A pedestal tomb surmounted by a draped urn marks the grave of Daniel Barnard (1825-1875), owner of the music halls in Chatham, and elected High Constable of Chatham in 1862. The burial ground is also the final resting place of Charles Isaacs, the country’s first Jewish High Constable (he was elected to that office for Rochester in 1854). Two Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones commemorate men who died in 1917; each headstone bears a Star of David containing the traditional quotation from Samuel, 25:29. (1)

<1> Historic England, National Heritage List for England (Index). SKE29372.

Sources and further reading