These pictures were taken on June 10, 1981.  This was immediately after Shavuot and two days before I emigrated to the United States.  You can see how it was a priority for me to "capture" this shul before I left for the USA, not knowing when the shul would close.  Arrangements to photograph the shul were made with the shammus over that yomtov.  A set of prints was given to the shul for its own archives.

At some point in the future I will place a video on this page of the shul's valedictory service that was held on Monday, June 23, 1992.  The former chazan, Geoffrey L. Shisler, conducted the service and Egerton Road's former Rabbi, Dayan Ivan Binstock of the London Beth Din gave the address.  A small choir was assembled on the bimah as the choir gallery had suffered water damage from a leaking roof.

I had not known about the valedictory service before visiting the UK on my summer vacation and subsequently reading about it in the Jewish Chronicle.  The fact that I was able to capture this historic event on NTSC video was a fluke since I was scheduled to return to the USA two days later.  I also have two audio tapes (in stereo) taken much earlier which captures the Egerton Road choir from the choir gallery and the shul's wonderful acoustics in its full glory.  One audio recording was a memorial service for a former honorary officer (conducted by Chazan Avrom Levin, now of the Ilford Synagogue, Beehive Lane) and the other was my sister's wedding.  Extracts from these recordings will eventually be encoded into streaming audio.

Click on the small images to view the large image versions.  For the moment, these are flat-bed scanned prints.  Significantly better pictures will be available later - just as soon as I can find the negatives!  There are 32 prints in total.

View from ladies gallery.
 

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