London’s historic Bevis Marks synagogue has won a first round in attempts to prevent two planned high-rise towers to overshadow it.
On Tuesday the City of London Corporation Planning Committee rejected plans to build Bury House, a 48-storey office tower next to the Grade I listed 320-year-old shul, Britain’s oldest synagogue in continuous use. Councillors voted 14-7 to reject the planning application for the tower, proposed to be built on Bury Street.
A planning application for a second, 21-storey high-rise, on nearby Creechurch Lane, is still under consideration however.
“The special status of Bevis Marks has been recognised by the Planning Committee and common sense has prevailed,” Dame Helen Hyde, Chair of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, said in a statement. “We hope the Committee will make the same decision with the second application which is equally unacceptable.”
The rejected Bury Street project would have entailed “demolition of existing building and construction of a new building comprising 2 basement levels (plus 2 mezzanines) and ground floor plus 48 upper storeys for office use, flexible retail/cafe use, publicly accessible internal amenity space and community space; a new pedestrian route and new and improved Public Realm; ancillary basement cycle parking, servicing and plant.”
During the Committee session, critics stressed that if the two planned high-rises were built, they — along with existing buildings — would block sunlight to the synagogue for all but around an hour a day, affecting religious observance and other synagogue functions. Proponents of the plan, however, told the Committee that the effect would be minimal.
© Blake Ezra (Courtesy Bevis Marks synagogue) Photography 2016.
The Committee had received more than 1,800 comments about the Bury Street plan — most of them critical, stressing the national importance of the site and raising the concerns that the high-rise would dominate the space, cut the synagogue off from light and access, and possibly provoke structural damage.
A final decision will be made by the by the City of London’s assistant town clerk, after receiving the Committee’s rejection recommendation.
The Save Bevis Marks web site raised awareness of both high-rise projects and marshalled protests against them, asking “High-rise office buildings would never be considered 4m away from St Paul’s Cathedral — So why should it be acceptable here?”
Prominent personalities including the historian Sir Simon Schama lent their voices to the campaign.
Bevis Marks was built in 1701 and is administered by the Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Community. Parallel to the high-rise issue, it is undergoing renovation and development work aimed to expand and improve visitor experience.
In 2019 it received a nearly £2.8 million grant from the National Heritage Lottery Fund for “vital restoration work and conservation for its collections” so that they can be displayed in a new section of the synagogue complex. In February of this year, it received £497,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to kick start the renovation and other work that had been hampered over the previous year by the COVID 19 pandemic.
The work is begin overseen by the Bevis Marks Synagogue Heritage Foundation, which was established in 2019 — with Prince Charles as its patron.
On October 4, the day before Bury St. high-rise plans were rejected, the Foundation released a video statement by Charles stressing the historic, cultural, religious, educational, and societal importance of the synagogue.
Neither his statement — nor the work of the Foundation — directly touches the issue of the two proposed high-rise towers. But some viewers might interpret the tenor of Charles’s words as implicit support for critics of the high-rise plans.
Save Bevis Marks Synagogue web site
See a virtual exhibition about the rejected Bury House plans
Bevis Marks Synagogue Heritage Foundation web site
See details and comments on the rejected Bury House proposal