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JEWISH PROPERTY POST-EXPULSION

With the expulsion, the town of Northampton was emptied of its Jews, and their former properties were rapidly disposed of. The cemetery was apparently desecrated within the year, and the stones of its walls, and its tombstones quickly reused as building material. A number of tombstones have been found scattered across the old town of Northampton suggesting how thoroughly the cemetery was dispersed.

While two of the Jewish properties, the communal buildings in front of the synagogue were demolished, several remained and survived as substantial stone residences up to their probable destruction in the Fire of Northampton in 1675. The former synagogue seems to have become the Mayoral residence of Northampton until the Great Fire. There are a number of legal and fiscal documents through the centuries that refer to the continuing existence of the former synagogue of the Jews, including a will of 1630 in which William Raynsford, former Mayor of Northampton, left the property to his daughter.

Henry Lee, the Town Clerk of Northampton, records in 1715, that various Jews built themselves houses in Northampton, and goes onto details three that he remembered from before the fire. He describes one in detail, which is identifiable as the former synagogue, which lay just south of the former Red Lyon Inn: 'It had a stately hall at the entrance down some stone stairs on the right hand, which hall was very large and open to the roof, as many great houses were in England, the windows on the outside of the house were very small and strengthened with iron bars, the whole was a large building.'

It is important to note that this former synagogue was semi-sunken into the ground. Recent research suggests that many of the English synagogues were lowered in this way, copying the German style in particular.