Two photographs showing a stained glass window and an arc with the Torah Scrolls at the Risca Road Synagogue in Newport.

Fallowing a decline in the congregation membership, a decision was reached in 1997 to close and sell the Queen's Hill Crescent Synagogue and to convert the Prayer House, a funeral building, which opened in 1977 on Risca Road (next to the old cemetery opened in 1859) into the Synagogue.

Newport Monmouthshire Hebrew Congregation was founded in 1859 by orthodox Jews meeting at a temporary synagogue in Llanarth Street. A synagogue at Francis Street was opened in 1869 and consecrated by the Chief Rabbi Dr Herman Adler in 1871. In 1934 the congregation moved to the Nathan Harris Memorial Hall in Queen’s Hill which was converted to a synagogue. In 1997 this synagogue was closed, and the congregation moved to the Prayer House by the Jewish Burial Ground on Risca Road. Within 20 years the congregation had dwindled to a few members able to attend and this too had ceased to hold services.

Sources:
“History of our Shul. The First Hundred Years", published by Newport Congregation in 1959;
Oral history interviews with members of the Newport Mon Hebrew Congregation, recorded in 2018 by JHASW.

Depository: Gwent Archives.