Jews first migrated to England in the eleventh-century from Normandy. The first historical record of Jews in Bristol comes in 1194, with the city’s fifteen Jews paying £22 14s. 2d. in tax. Medieval Bristol had three synagogues, and a Jewish cemetery on Brandon Hill. In 1290, after decades of violence at the hands of the general populace, and financial extortion from the crown, Jews were expelled from England by royal edict. Jews first returned unoficially to Bristol in the sixteenth-century, before finally being officially tolerated in the 1650s. The return of the Jewish community was an uphill struggle, but a slowly successful one. This 1790 plan for a ‘Jews Churchyard’ on Brandon Hill echoes the Jewish cemetery that stood on the northwest of Brandon Hill for a century prior to the expulsion of the Jews. The site became known as ‘Jews Acre’, and this plan for a ‘Jews Churchyard’ represents a cultural echo of the community that once existed.
