Two projects aimed as preserving and valorizing Jewish history and heritage and in two seacoast cities — Brighton, on the English Channel and Grimsby, on the North Sea — have received National Lottery Heritage funded grants.
One is the ongoing project to restore and bring new life to Brighton’s beautiful Middle Street Synagogue, which marked its 150th anniversary this year, and the other is a new “Hidden Stories” project about Grimsby’s Jewish history, focusing on the Jewish immigrants who came to Britain through the Grimsby seaport but also on the Moses Montefiore synagogue built there in 1885-88.
Middle Street Synagogue
The National Lottery Heritage Fund granted £112,740 to the Middle Street Synagogue project, an ongoing partnership between synagogue owners the Brighton and Hove Hebrew Congregation and the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, whose aim is to restore the opulent but long-disused synagogue and ensure its future as a cultural and educational venue as well as religious center. The grant supplies the major part of the £130,000 plan to carry out necessary detailed survey work, urgent repairs, and outreach activities.
The Grade II* listed building was designed by Thomas Lainson and opened in 1875. It is located in a Brighton city centre conservation area. Named by Historic England in 2015 as one of the 10 most beautiful synagogues in Great Britain, it was closed for regular worship 20 years ago when its congregation dwindled as much of the Jewish community moved to the suburbs.
“This project builds on work in 2024 that looked at an ‘Options Appraisal’, supported by the Heritage Fund, Pilgrim Trust, and Architectural Heritage Fund funding, that identified a new use for the site as a Brighton and Hove Hebrew Congregation vibrant cultural and educational centre,” the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, which was commissioned by Brighton & Hove Hebrew Congregation (BHHC) to carry out a Feasibility Study for the project, said on its web site.
The current planned works will help to secure the building and lay the groundwork for a future larger project which will transform this iconic Synagogue, becoming a lively hub for culture, education and heritage for the local community and visitors. It will also be retained for occasional religious services including weddings.
Grimsby
Heritage Lincolnshire received a grant from the Heritage Place Hidden Stories grant fund in North East Lincolnshire for its project Dockside diaspora – uncovering Grimsby’s Jewish heritage, which will create an exhibition based on the stories of the Jewish immigrants who arrived there, to travel and then be installed in the Sir Moses Montefiore Synagogue. (The Heritage Place Hidden Stories grant is funded through the National Lottery Heritage Fund and administered by Create North East Lincolnshire.)
Grimsby was the third largest centre of Jewish immigration in the UK, after London and Hull, with more than 100,000 Jewish people landing there between 1881 and 1914.
Many went on to Liverpool and sailed for America, but some stayed. The Grade II listed Synagogue is the only remaining synagogue in Lincolnshire and one of few of this period in the country to survive so intact.
The complex of the synagogue and its mikvah, built in 1916, “reflects the former significance of Grimsby’s Jewish community and the town’s prominence in the movement of Jews from Eastern Europe to Britain and America,” Heritage Lincolnshire said,
In partnership with Grimsby Hebrew Congregation at Sir Moses Montefiore Synagogue, the project will research Jewish individuals and families who came to Grimsby fleeing persecution from Russia and eastern Europe and focus on their experiences in Grimsby and further afield.
This research will feed into an exhibition which will be made collaboratively with community partners and will appear at locations across NE Lincolnshire before becoming a permanent display at the synagogue.
The project will be completed by 31st August 2026, the Foundation for Jewish Heritage, which is a consultant on the exhibition, said.
The Dockside Diaspora project will work in parallel with conservation work at the red brick synagogue, which received a £41,450 grant from the Lottery Heritage Fund earlier this year and is already under way.
“The history of the Synagogue in Grimsby is an important and little known story locally,” Tracy Stringfellow, CEO of Heritage Lincolnshire , said in a statement. “This heritage deserves to be understood, shared, and valued as part of Lincolnshire’s wider narrative. Heritage Lincolnshire are very pleased to support this research and help play a part in bringing that story to light. We are pleased to have the support of the Foundation of Jewish Heritage to help us tell this important story.”