• Introduction
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TOWARDS THE MODERN ERA

Between the expulsion of 1290 and the reestablishment of the community in the 19th century, Northampton and its county was not entirely bereft of a Jewish presence.

In the 1470s, Sir Edward Bampton, a baptised Jew, was one of the largest landowners in Northamptonshire, having married into a local landowning family.

The discovery of an old metal cased mezuzah found during sewer excavations in Grafton Street circa 1900 also provides physical evidence of Jewish occupation. The report placed the age of the case, and mezuzah, at about a hundred years old, though it could well have been much older. As to how it got there nobody knows, though the presence of a mezuzah is always suggestive of a Jewish dwelling.

The first 18th Century Jew known to hail from Northampton, was Bernard Levy a Jewish peddler. It's recorded that he was robbed of his money, but not his pack of silks and jewellery between Eynsham and Witney in 1770. He settled in a shop in Woodstock months later and died in 1810. It is also known that a Thomas Levi, born in Northamptonshire, served in the navy, when he joined HMS Glory at Plymouth in 1793. A Nathan son of Moses, meanwhile, was a witness to a local Quaker wedding in 1815, demonstrating the long affinity between the Jews and the Quakers.

The first permanent resident of the town was probably Adolf Gonski (1807-1893), from Posen, recorded in 1847. He may be regarded as the originator of the modern community and lived in Northampton with Joseph, Paulina and Hannah Davis and 'Gonski and Davis' were registered as toy dealers at 24 Sheep Street and later diversified into hardware. They subsequently moved to London.