Religion and Place

Historic places of worship are amongst our most beautiful buildings, but their importance goes far beyond their architecture. They are also parts of the history of people and places and help to tell the stories of individuals and communities. To this end, an exciting programme of projects began two years ago, to work with communities to identify and map the places of worship of all faiths in their area, culminating in some exceptional exhibitions and publications.  In November 2007 English Heritage published Religion and Place in Leeds, a new book that looks at the impact that multi-faith, multi-denominational communities gave had on the character and appearance of the city over the past 100 years. A companion volume on Liverpool will appear later this year.

Egerton Road Synagogue in Hackney In Tower Hamlets, London the Religion and Place project led on to an exhibition in February 2008 at the Whitechapel Ideas Store, organised by the Hackney Building Exploratory. It was created by six artists and 150 local secondary school children who created ‘faith chests’ representing their responses to religious buildings in the borough.
A resource based on the Tower Hamlets project can be found at Religion and Place in Tower Hamlets