History
England's first Jewish cemetery, the Velho Cemetery, was built on a small plot of land in Mile End in 1657. As the nearby Jewish community grew in size the Velho began to fill up. By 1726, it was nearly full, so land for a second, larger Sephardi cemetery, the Novo Cemetery, was leased, with the first burials taking place in 1733. [1] [2]
By 1895 the cemetery was almost full, and it was closed for burials for adults in 1905 and for children in 1918. Historic England added it to the register of listed buildings in 2014, as a Grade II. [3]
In 1984, “Seven thousand graves had been removed and reinterred at Brentwood in Essex. The remaining part of the cemetery contains the most recent burials - from 1865 to 1916,” as noted on interpretive signage overlooking the cemetery. Therefore, some of the Notable People below are likely no longer buried here.
In 2012, Seth Stein Architects undertook “a sensitive restoration and landscaping scheme around the perimeter of an 18th century Jewish cemetery,” that includes an extensive set of interpretive panels.
The site includes a low circular memorial marking a portion of the cemetery destroyed by a German bomb dropped on the site during WWII.
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
