Jewish country homes – a Kentish exhibition

June roses and tranquillity at Ightam Mote, photo by Philippa Linton

Recently I visited Ightam Mote, one of many National Trust properties dotted around my part of Kent, along with English Heritage castles and stately homes and one Roman villa. Ightam Mote is a picturesque medieval moated house with a rich and fascinating history. I’ve been there many times, but my reason that day was to see an exhibition called ‘Country Houses, Jewish Homes.’

Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson bought the house in 1889. His second wife Mary Freda Cohen, whom he married in 1915, was closely related to two famous Jewish families, the Rothschilds and the Montefiores. Sir Thomas already had some links with the Jewish community: his first wife Beatrice was the daughter of Friedrich Max Müller, Oxford University’s first Professor of Philology, who was friendly with the composer Felix Mendelssohn, and members of the Cohen and Monfefiore families were also regular visitors to Ightham Mote in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The exhibition provided a short history of Jewish life in Britain, as well as the Jewish connection with Ightam Mote. The first written record of Jews living in Britain dates from 1070, although some historians believe there were Jews living in these islands in Roman times. In 1292, King Edward 1 expelled all Jews from England. This expulsion lasted officially until 1656, although Jews continued to live here for centuries, albeit often ‘hidden’, ie they often had to conceal their faith because of the intense persecution which had erupted in the Middle Ages. The 19th century brought the emancipation of Roman Catholics and Jews from the legal restrictions which had previously forbidden them from taking full part in civic life. Despite centuries of prejudice and discrimination, there were already Jewish MPs in the 1830s, including Benjamin Disraeli, who of course became our first – and to date, only – Prime Minister of Jewish heritage.

Mary Colyer-Fergusson was not the only Jewish woman to marry into the British aristocracy. The exhibition outlined some of the challenges such families faced, living on remote country estates without easy access to kosher kitchens in London, and working hard to maintain their religious and cultural identities. During World War Two, Jewish landowners offered their beautiful homes as sanctuaries and community centres to fellow Jews and other refugees fleeing the Holocaust.

As I wandered round the timbered rooms and corridors of Ightam Mote, gazing at the beautiful stained glass windows in the chapel and the heraldic devices of the families who had lived there, I thought about stories of power, privilege and exclusion. These Jewish families had fought hard, like other religious minorities, for their place at the table, for their right to enjoy the same privileges as those who held the reins of power.

In these fractured, troubling times, it’s more important than ever that we, as Christian writers, are aware of the dark undercurrents of bigotry that never quite disappear from society. Our Lord and Saviour was Himself a Jew, yet His own people have often suffered intensely at the hands of the Church. Let us stand with all those who fight to have their voices heard and their stories told.

I’m an Anglican lay minister, and work full-time for the United Reformed Church as Administrator for their education and learning office. I wrote a devotional for the anthology Light for the Writer’s Soul, published by Media Associates International, and my short story ‘Magnificat’ appears in the ACW anthology Merry Christmas Everyone