The London Metropolitan Archives is a public archive, housing a broad collection of social, religious, and local history records.

Archive Description

London Metropolitan Archives holds one of the most important collections of Jewish archives in the UK.  Its collections include archives of major national Jewish organisations as well as many schools, synagogues and charities working in London for the local Jewish population. Large institutions with a national remit such as the Office of the Chief Rabbi, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the London Beth Din are included among the collections, as are national and international welfare organisations including World Jewish Relief.

The archive of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews Congregation are held at LMA and includes records created by the congregation in its original home of Bevis Marks in the City of London as well as its current base in Maida Vale, and Ashkenazi religious communities, including the orthodox United Synagogue and Federation of Synagogues, the Liberal Jewish Synagogue and several individual Reform and Independent congregations have their records here.

Many documents from the Bevis Marks archives have been digitised by the LMA and placed online by the National Library of Israel. A Nação Hebraica is a project that, with the help of machine learning, aims to transcribe these documents and make them available online.

The archive of the Jews Free School (now JFS) are also held at LMA, as are the Association of Jewish Teachers and the London School of Jewish Studies.  Local charitable organisations range from the Jewish Memorial Council, the Jews Temporary Shelter and Nightingale (formerly the Home for Aged Jews) to the tiny Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor in Stepney, among many others.

Access Information

The LMA is open to the public, Monday – Thursday, 9.30 am to 4.45 pm, with a late opening on Wednesday until 7.30 pm. Users must register either online or in person to access the material, and registration requires photographic identification (i.e driver’s license, passport etc.).

Online registration can be done here.

Enquiries can be made online through this portal on the LMA website.

Online Accessibility

The LMA catalogue is available online, along with digital collections including digitised documents, images, and exhibitions.

Street Address

London Metropolitan Archives
40 Northampton Road
Clerkenwell EC1R 0HB