Bevis Marks
This strangely named street continues the line of the Roman wall. It has been called variously Bewesmarkes (1407), Bevys Marke (1450), Bevers-market (1630), or Beausmarkes. Stow, in his Survey of London, says the name comes from the Abbots of Bury St. Edmunds, who owned the area up until the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
At Stow’s time, the ditch which ran outside the wall was still much used for the disposal of rubbish – and he complains about the ditch running along Bevis Marks as being popularly used as a site for depositing the bodies of dead dogs. This is thought to be the origin of the name of the nearby parallel street Houndsditch.
The Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in the street was founded by Rabbi David Nieto who led a congregation in a small synagogue in Creechurch Lane in 1698. The arrival at that time of a large number of Jews in the country meant that bigger premises were needed. In 1699it was agreed that the Quaker builder Joseph Avis should be awarded the contract for £2,750, though he later refused payment saying that it was wrong to profit from building a house for God.
The building is said to incorporate a beam from a royal ship presented to the community by Queen Anne. Work was completed in 1702 and the building remains largely unchanged to this day. The interior décor, furnishings and layout of the synagogue were influenced by the 1677 Amsterdam Synagogue.
For over a hundred years the Bevis Marks Synagogue was the religious centre of the Anglo-Jewish world. It assisted and represented the interests of many, including seven-year-old Moses de Paz, who escaped from Gibraltar in 1777 to escape enforced conversion.
Later, as Jews left the City and moved out to the West End and the suburbs, the Bevis Marks synagogue became less important as a religious centre.
During the 1800s more synagogues were built nearer to the new Jewish homes and a “Bevis Marks Anti-Demolition League” had to be set up to prevent the sale of the site.
Though there would likely have been few Jews in Roman London, it is difficult to overestimate the significance of Rome in the Diaspora.
Though this is commonly agreed to have begun with the defeats of the 8th century BC and the destruction of the First Temple in the 6th century BC, with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD following the Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans, Jerusalem was razed to the ground and, although there was hope that Hadrian would rebuild it for the Jews in 130 AD, he actually decided to construct a new Roman colonia called Aelia Capitolina, dedicated to Jupiter.
This led to the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 132 AD, after which the majority of the Jewish population was killed, exiled or enslaved. Jews were prevented from entering Jerusalem on pain of death and the centre of Judaism switched to the Babylonian community – not to return in force to Judea until the mid 20th century