Harrow, including Pinner : Jews

JEWS.

The first synagogue was established in the area in 1918 and became a district member of the United Synagogue in 1933. Premises in Sheepcote Road were registered as the Harrow and Kenton Synagogue in 1935. In 1946, as the Harrow Hebrew Congregation, it acquired 3, Vaughan Road, Harrow. (fn. 1) During the 1930s numbers of Jews, mostly belonging to the United Synagogue, moved into Harrow, especially into the Kenton and Wembley districts. When the Vaughan Road premises were acquired, a group of Kenton Jews formed a second congregation which established a synagogue in Kenton Park Avenue in 1948, affiliated to the United Synagogue in 1949 and registered for worship a year later. A building was erected in Shaftesbury Avenue, Kenton, in 1958 and extended in 1962. (fn. 2) Other United synagogues were established in Forty Avenue, Wembley (1934) (fn. 3) and in Cecil Park, Pinner (1941). (fn. 4)

A Liberal synagogue was established in 1947 at 326 Preston Road, Preston, where it was originally called the Wembley Progressive Jewish Congregation. (fn. 5) In 1959 a Reform synagogue, under the title of the Middlesex New Synagogue, was established at 39 Bessborough Road, Harrow, a square, 19thcentury building with a porch of Ionic columns. (fn. 6) From 1966 a Sephardi congregation held services in the Congregational church hall, the Broadway, Wembley. (fn. 7) It was estimated in 1965 that there were approximately 21,000 Jewish people in the London Borough of Harrow and the Wembley part of Brent. Of these, about 16,000 were connected with the synagogues in the area. (fn. 8)