History
A Jewish community existed in Cardiff by 1841, when the Marquess of Bute donated land at Highfield for a Jewish Cemetery. The congregation, which is the result of the merger of several historic congregations, traces its roots to the Old Hebrew Congregation, which erected a synagogue building on Trinity Street in 1853, and to the Bute Street synagogue of 1858.[2] Bute Street was the centre of the Jewish community in the nineteenth century.[3]
Former locations and ancestral congregations in Cardiff include the following:[4]
- Original (Old Hebrew) congregation,
- Trinity Street, Cardiff (1853–1858)
- East Terrace, Bute Street, Cardiff (1858–1897; redeveloped 1888)
- Cathedral Road, Cardiff (1897–1989)
- New (Orthodox) congregation,
- Edwards Place, Cardiff (1889–1900)
- Merches Place, Cardiff (1900–?)
- Windsor Place congregation, Windsor Place, Cardiff (1918–1955)
- Penylan congregation, Ty Gwyn Road, Penylan (1955–2003)
The most architecturally distinguished of the several historic synagogue buildings was the classical/eclectic synagogue in Windsor Place.[citation needed] One of the congregation's former buildings was purchased in 1979 and converted into a Hindu temple.[5] With the diminution of the Cardiff Jewish community and a drift away from the older neighborhoods, these congregations consolidated in the present, modern building in Cyncoed Gardens, Cyncoed, dedicated by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in 2003.[6]