Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 03/10/2012

TQ 3381 NE 14A/414
4431
20.8.69

PRINCELET STREET E1
(north side)
No. 19

GV
II*

Terraced house, 1719 by Samuel Worrall, builder; adapted and extended as a synagogue 1870 by a Mr Hudson for the Loyal United Friends Friendly Society. Stock brick with red brick dressings and chenage, tuck pointing. Ground floor stuccoed after 1870. Slate roof, stack on party wall.
Three windows wide, three storeys, basement and weavers' attic with seven-bay window with leaded lights. The plan is two rooms deep with rear stair to side, beyond which is a prayer hall of two storeys with basement meeting room to rear. Sash windows with exposed boxes, 1870s windows to ground floor in round arches with scored voussoirs and keystones. Double panelled doors incorporating leaded fanlight 1870 in similar surround.
Interior. Entrance hall broadened and reflagged 1870 but original panelling and cornice reused in set-back position. Cast-iron balustrade to first floor; original open-string stair with turned balusters survives above. Original two rooms in basement served as kitchens for milk and meat, they retain 1870s' fireplaces and fittings. Both ground-floor rooms and first-floor rear room opened on to prayer hall - by means of folding doors - to seat overflow, they retain C18 panelling and cornices, that to first floor being most complete. Prayer hall with ladies' gallery on wrought-iron columns with Ionic capitals. Gallery fronts of timber and cast iron, chamfered and with memorial inscriptions of donors (faded) in English and Hebrew. Ark in apse with curved wrought-iron gates.
Bimah survives, though not in situ at time of inspection, along with many pews. Three brass hanging candelabra. Wrought-iron ties across roof to the sides heavy cornice, and brackets supported like beams that are now gone. Clerestorey with coloured glass and some opening panels.

The rest of the house retains its early C18 character to a remarkable degree. Front room three windows wide, panelled with dado rail and cornices, shutters, narrower panel over 1870s fireplace, corner cupboards with round-arched tops. Staircase hall fully panelled to second-floor landing, above which are a series of plank and muntin screens rare in London but a feature of Worrall's cost-cutting ways. Second-floor front room with cupboards, and an 1870s range. Third floor attic weaving room also with plank and muntin screen and plank door.
House retains many prayer boards and other synagogue fittings in storage within the building at time of inspection.
Recommended as of particular importance because it exemplifies the special history of Spitalfields, whose character has been marked by successive waves of immigrants. The upper portions retain associations with the Huguenot silk industry, whilst the rear extension is the best surviving small-scale Jewish prayer hall or 'shtiebl' once distinctive in the area.
Sources: Sam Melnick, A Giant among Giants, 1994
Dan Cruickshank, ed. The Saving of Spitalfields, 1984.

Listing NGR: TQ3382881871

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Museum of Immigration and Diversity at Wikipedia
• Museum of Immigration and Diversity official website
• Wikidata Q6940881

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Derbyshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair
• 
  Central Leinster: Kildare, Laois and Offaly (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of Ireland)
• 
  Hampshire: South (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)