This project collects information Of Jewish Families in Manchester, Salford - Prestwich 'United Kingdom'

Greater Manchester

Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million. It encompasses one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom and comprises ten metropolitan boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan, and the cities of Manchester and Salford.

Greater Manchester was created on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972, and designated a functional city region on 1 April 2011.
Greater Manchester spans 493 square miles (1,277 km2), which roughly covers the territory of the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, the second most populous urban area in the UK. It is landlocked and borders Cheshire (to the south-west and south), Derbyshire (to the south-east), West Yorkshire (to the north-east), Lancashire (to the north) and Merseyside (to the west). There is a mix of high-density urban areas, suburbs, semi-rural and rural locations in Greater Manchester, but land use is mostly urban—the product of concentric urbanisation and industrialisation which occurred mostly during the 19th century when the region flourished as the global centre of the cotton industry. It has a focused central business district, formed by Manchester city centre and the adjoining parts of Salford and Trafford, but Greater Manchester is also a polycentric county with ten metropolitan districts, each of which has at least one major town centre and outlying suburbs.

History of the Jews in Manchester

In the 1750s, Jews had no political rights in England, and in particular were not allowed to purchase property. As country members of the Great Synagogue, they traded as pedlars and hawkers. Small groups coalesced around safe Jew-friendly lodging houses where they organised temporary minyanim to observe the Shabbat. Liverpool was a focus for the first Jewish settlement in the North West of England, with communities in Cumberland Street who moved in 1775 to a room in Turton Court. Manchester was expanding rapidly, and in 1758 one family in trade became prosperous enough to acquire a private carriage. Manchester became an increasing important market, and Liverpool-based Jewish hawkers worked in Manchester in the week, returning to Liverpool to celebrate Sabbath.

About fourteen Jewish families settled in Manchester in 1786; their first synagogue was a rented room at Ainsworth Court, Long Millgate. Lemon and Jacob Nathan, Aaron Jacob, Isaac Franks, Abraham Isaac Cohen and his son Philip and Henry Isaacs and his sons formed the nucleus of group who leased a burial ground in 1794 and by 1796 had begun worshipping in an upper chamber room on Garden Street at Withy Grove. Aaron Jacob was the reader and shochet and Jacob Nathan was the overseer. Jews settled in streets around the synagogue. The wars against the French caused difficulties for them, particularly the Aliens Act 1793 which restricted their movement. Wolf Polack, a pawnbroker of Shudehill, was deported for undisclosed breaches of the Act in 1800. Wheeler's Manchester Chronicle supported the Act and encouraged readers to inform on them. The community was generally stable.

The size of the Jewish population in Greater Manchester is the largest in Britain outside London

At the 2011 UK census, 64.2% of Salford's residents were 3.3% Jewish,

Prestwich

The oldest part of Prestwich, around Bury New Road, is known as Prestwich Village. There is a large Jewish community in Prestwich together with neighbouring Whitefield, Cheetham Hill, Crumpsall and Broughton Park in Salford which forms the second-largest Jewish community in the United Kingdom.

From the 1991 census the population of Prestwich was estimated at 33,047. An estimated 19% of the population of Prestwich and Whitefield are Jewish and are part of the second largest Jewish community in the UK outside London, which also reaches over the border into Salford's Broughton and Manchester's districts of Crumpsall and Cheetham Hill.

The area in the south of Prestwich known as Sedgley Park has a very sizeable Jewish population and is served by some five synagogues. There are many Jewish businesses, specialist shops and delicatessens along King's Road, Bury New Road and Bury Old Road.