There was a little number, 223, pasted onto the back of one of the centuries-old wooden seats in Bevis Marks synagogue in the City of London. ‘What are these?’ I asked Rabbi Shalom Morris, who was showing me round.

‘They’re called gavetas,’ he replied, opening the lid of a compartment in the bench. ‘It’s a Portuguese word. They’re for people to leave their personal property here – prayer shawls and things – as we don’t carry anything on Shabbat.’

It was a detail that impressed on me the long history of the Sephardi tradition here, the oldest continuously functioning synagogue in Europe today. And now, Bevis Marks synagogue is under threat. There’s a proposal for a 43-storey tower block a few yards away at 31 Bury Street, which would literally overshadow the synagogue in its quiet paved courtyard.

To me, any very tall building in the City plonked next to an ancient place of worship is bullying bad manners

Rabbi Morris, with a habitual smile and a New York accent from his upbringing, sounded the most unhappy when trying to convey his relations with the City of London authorities. He is fighting their planning decisions and simultaneously ‘pleading’ with them – an uncomfortable position. In the face of what Rabbi Morris calls ‘an abuse of power and a breach of our community’s trust’, the defence of Bevis Marks has attracted some eminent people. Nine professors of history, a former Lord Mayor, a former Master of the Rolls and well-known names like the historian Simon Schama and the novelist Howard Jacobson were among the 27 signatories of a letter in the Daily Telegraph declaring that ‘the City’s failure to consider the religious and cultural dimensions of the synagogue will cause outrage’.

To me, any very tall building in the City plonked next to an ancient place of worship is bullying bad manners. In the street called Bevis Marks (a name deriving from the property of the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds), a block built in 2019 bulges out over it, earning itself the nickname the Can of Ham.

I realise that some people like tall glass-clad buildings. Just let them not build them in front of St Paul’s or the remaining old buildings of the City of London which give us reason to love it as a tight urban development on a human scale. The reductio ad absurdum of recent London development has been the proposal to build a 20-storey block actually above the listed Liverpool Street station and the hotel next door.

The case of Bevis Marks synagogue is particularly painful because it is unique of its kind, as historically emblematic to Jewry as St Paul’s Cathedral is to Christianity. What is so frustrating for defenders of the synagogue is that only in June 2022 the City denied planning permission for a development at 31 Bury Street because it ‘would adversely affect the setting of the Grade I-listed Bevis Marks synagogue’.

But since then, the City authorities have decided not to include 31 Bury Street in considering the ‘immediate setting’ of the synagogue. And although 31 Bury Street is now part of a conservation area, a prohibition of very tall buildings has been dropped.

In response to a City report on the synagogue, Abigail Green, professor of modern European History at the University of Oxford, made a point that struck a chord. ‘The heritage value of Bevis Marks synagogue is not purely architectural,’ she said. There is all the difference between a place of worship of historic beauty being conserved in use, and one kept open only as a museum. The latter can have the tragic air of a house abandoned in wartime.

Bevis Marks is a living community, not a museum. It holds Friday night and Saturday morning services and is popular for weddings. Its architecture also reflects the fortunes of the Jewish community since their implied ‘readmission’ to England under Oliver Cromwell several centuries after the expulsion of Jews in 1290.

The synagogue from the outside looks like a plain brick preaching-box of the period. It is not showy, less so even than the contemporary St Benet Paul’s Wharf, one of Wren’s essays in red brick. The flat east end of the synagogue forms part of the continuous building-line along Heneage Lane, a quiet York-stone pedestrian thoroughfare with lampposts down the middle.

It remains the only non-Christian place of worship in the City. The builders of the synagogue were trying not to ask for trouble, just as the 18th-century Catholic church in Warwick Street, built in the era before Catholic Emancipation, also kept to unadorned red brick with round-headed windows. Hence, at Bevis Marks, the discreet entrance is from a courtyard.

Today a stone is set over the iron gates from the street. (A security man let me in, since I had an appointment. That is the way things are today.) It bears an inscription repeated over the doorway within: ‘A.M. 5461.’ A.M. stands for Anno Mundi. Above the date is an inscription in Hebrew: Shaar Asamaim – the Gate of Heaven.

The reference is to Jacob, awaking after his vision of the ladder to heaven and exclaiming: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ It is a reference also taken up by Christian churches.

Entering the synagogue from the courtyard at its western end, the visitor faces the Ark at the far end, which contains the Torah scrolls in a cabinet behind doors. Two panels above are inscribed with the Ten Commandments. There is a direct parallel here with the Commandment boards directed to be set up in Church of England parishes under Elizabeth I. Indeed the Ark at Bevis Marks bears a striking resemblance to a Wren altarpiece.

The architect was a master builder called Joseph Avis, who had worked for Wren, as had his craftsmen. The architectural historian Sharman Kadish notes other similarities to Wren churches and to contemporary Nonconformist churches, such as the large round-headed windows in all four walls filled with clear glass and the galleries on each side, which here accommodated women worshippers. Bevis Marks, says Dr Kadish, ‘is rooted in English soil, built by an English architect using English materials and influenced by contemporary English styles. On the other hand, it cannot be fully understood without reference to the architectural tradition of the western Sephardim, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, that began in Amsterdam.’

Bevis Marks synagogue is unique of its kind, as historically emblematic to Jewry as St Paul’s is to Christianity

Inside, it is a quiet symphony of woodwork: the old floorboards, the high-seated benches facing the centre (as in Oxbridge colleges), the reading platform like a little stern-deck of a ship, the Tuscan pillars supporting the galleries, conventionally painted to resemble marble. From the plain ceiling seven big brass chandeliers hang low, to shed the light of hundreds of candles on service books. The biggest chandelier, in the centre, was a gift from the Portuguese Great Synagogue of Amsterdam. But they weren’t intended for use instead of daylight.

Visually, the marvellous thing is that the interior hasn’t obviously been messed about. The synagogue escaped many mortal dangers. A hundred yards away, the Great Synagogue, from the Ashkenazi tradition, was destroyed in the Blitz. Few now seem aware of its existence. The IRA bombings of the Baltic Exchange in 1992 and of Bishopsgate in 1993 left only superficial damage.

A more insidious danger loomed in the 1880s. A dependent Sephardic synagogue had been built in 1866 at Bryanston Street near Marble Arch. It would make perfect sense to sell the land at Bevis Marks to fund the synagogue in the West End. This disastrous error of judgment was headed off by the gloriously named Bevis Marks Anti-Demolition League.

Rabbi Morris, who has been here nine years, lives over the shop, or at least next to the synagogue. He took me out into the courtyard to the northern corner of the building. There we could see the sky on two sides, towards the south. In Jewish practice, the sabbath ends when three stars are visible, and a month begins when the moon is seen in the sky. The proposed tower-block would obliterate that sky.

‘It survived the Blitz, two subsequent bomb attacks and Victorian attempts at demolition,’ William Whyte, professor of architectural history at the University of Oxford told me. ‘It would be a tragedy for our generation to be the ones who disregarded its significance as both an architectural gem and a precious piece of religious heritage.’<//>