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A sound walk from Bevis Marks to the Serpentine, and on west to Holland Park and Lauderdale Road. It follows the anusim (אֲנוּסִים, "the forced ones"), Jews forced to convert in Spain and Portugal, and the descendants who returned to Judaism in London.
The music is synthesised stand-in sound in a Sephardic-sounding mode. The real piece uses community voices recorded with consent. Use Add recording on any chapter to hear it with your own voice instead. The narration is a draft script.
Each chapter holds more stories than its main narration. On the walk they unlock one by one the longer you stay at a station, so a quick walk takes about 90 minutes, while a slow one can fill an afternoon. Here you can read them all by theme.
Every story is a draft from general knowledge, marked to check, for a historian and the community's archivists to confirm before recording.
A rented house in the City, the first synagogue after the Readmission of 1656. Nothing of it survives. Chapter 2 stands on the spot.
Built by the returners and still in use, the oldest synagogue in Britain. The walk begins at its gate.
Opened as the community followed London's Jews west. It became the everyday heart of S&P life: services, weddings, classes, and the community's offices. The westward walk ends here.
Built by Sephardi families from the old Ottoman lands, such as Salonika and Istanbul, who brought their own melodies and Ladino songs.
The community's congregation in north-west London, for families who settled further out. It is marked on the map as a chapter you hear when you are there.
Dates and details are a first draft to confirm with the S&P community's archivists before anything is recorded.
It returns after Havdalah.