The Jewish community in Leicestershire developed slowly.
Records from the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries hint at short-lived enterprises, but in 1860 the Jewish residents appealed successfully for funds for a synagogue.
As numbers rose into the hundreds, due to Eastern European arrivals, why did it take another 40 years to get a cemetery?
About Carol Cambers
Carol Cambers completed an MA course at the Centre for English Local History at Leicester University, which included a study of the city’s Jewish cemetery.
She led the research team on the Lives Behind the Stones project which produced a website for the cemetery, containing its history, photographs, biographical details and stories.
When Leicester Hebrew Congregation received a grant for a Heritage Centre further individual research unearthed new information about the presence of Jews in the area and their lives since the late eighteenth century.
This information has been condensed into two books, describing the story of the younger, smaller sibling of the congregations of Nottingham, Birmingham and Lincoln.