Prayer Hall Building, Hoop Lane Jewish Cemetery

Heritage listing

Details Ohel (Jewish prayer hall) building, providing both Reform and Sephardi prayer halls, built by 1897 in an eclectic style combining elements of Romanesque, Byzantine and Arts and Crafts; the architects were Davis and Emanuel. MATERIALS: red brick laid in Flemish bond, banded with sandstone, with terracotta ornament. The deep pitched roof is covered with plain tiles; there are brick chimney stacks with octagonal shafts, and stone shoulders and capping. Over each Ohel is a small gabled ventilation opening, with a finial. Running beneath the roof eaves is a decorative terracotta Lombardy frieze. The building retains the original metal-framed windows with cathedral glass and coloured marginal lights. PLAN: the building is a long rectangle, set on a west/east axis, with the central porte-corchère aligned with the main cemetery entrance immediately to the south. To the west is the West London Synagogue prayer hall; to the east is the Spanish and Portuguese prayer hall. Each prayer hall is entered from the carriageway, with coffins escorted for burial through doorways to the north. EXTERIOR: the tall round-headed archway of the central porte-corchère is framed to both south and north by a pedimented frontispiece enriched with terracotta tiles, with a band of Moorish ornament running beneath the pediment. To either side, squared pilasters flanking the archway rise into octagonal columns, topped by ogival lantern finials in stone. Similar finials mark the corners of the building. The prayer halls are each of three bays, the round-headed windows with rubbed-brick arches separated by sturdy buttresses with shouldered off-sets; on the north elevation the central bay to each prayer hall is occupied by a round-headed doorway containing original panelled double doors beneath a s

From the Historic England List Entry under OGL v3.