FELLOW member, Z. Yaakov Wise, surprised members of Bury Local History Society, by claiming that the Jewish population of the UK is less than 300,000. In fact, it has never been higher than 500,000.

However, a large proportion of Jews have achieved leading positions in business, entertainment and politics and thus have acquired a higher profile than their numbers suggest, but it was not always so.

Under the title Immigrants and Natives; Jewish Burial Grounds in Metro Bury, Mr Wise traced the growth of the Jewish population in Manchester and emphasised, in his usual ebullient style, that not all Jews were wealthy. Many came to England in humble circumstances to work as hawkers, travelling from place to place selling spectacles, watches and jewellery, and in particular old clothes, cast-offs from wealthier families, before the days of the ready-made tailor. The burgeoning cotton industry in Manchester in the early 19th century provided opportunities that many in the Jewish community were ready and eager to grasp.

The social history of the period can be clearly traced through gravestones. The first Jewish cemetery in Manchester was a plot of land 15 yards by 12 yards near St Thomas's Parish Church in Pendleton. The land was released from Samuel Brierley, a Methodist silk dyer in 1794, and served the community of the Manchester Old Hebrew congregation until a new cemetery was built in Prestwich in 1841.

By this time, mixed fortunes within the community had created class divisions and the new cemetery was physically divided between the privileged elite on the left and lesser mortals on the right. There were also splits in the orthodoxy, and a splinter group, the New Synagogue, opened its own cemetery in Collyhurst two years later, catering particularly for impoverished immigrants from central Europe.

The Prestwich cemetery served a large area of the north of England from Newcastle-under-Lyme in the south to Lancaster in the north, and encompassed two large state institutions; the County Lunatic Asylum - one of the largest in Europe - and the Prestwich Union Workhouse which housed a large number of Jewish paupers between 1870 and 1914.

Prestwich cemetery was replaced by Crumpsall cemetery in the 1880s and gradually fell into decline. In 1951, the local council laid out a garden of rest at the entrance to the cemetery, but it remained neglected.

Today, the original wrought iron gates remain locked, the burial ground is vandalised and inaccessible, yet it is only a few yards from busy Bury New Road and, as Mr Wise observed, less than two miles from one of the richest Jewish communities in Europe.

As Bury's new museum and archive is not yet open, the intended visit by the society on April 7 has been moved to May 5, and will be replaced by a members' evening at St Marie's club room, Manchester Road at 7.45pm.

T.E.A.