The building at 59 Brick Lane, on the corner of Fournier Street, has been home to a succession of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim[a] communities since its construction in the mid-eighteenth century, reflecting the waves of immigration in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields.

During this time (see History of the Jews in England), the area was home to many Jewish refugees from Russia and Central Europe.

[7] From the 1880s through the early part of the 20th century, massive pogroms and the May Laws in Russia caused many Jews to flee the Pale of Settlement.

[8] From 1916, the synagogue's leader was the notable Abraham Isaac Kook, later the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandatory Palestine.

[9] During the 1970s, the area of Spitalfields and Brick Lane was populated mainly by Bangladeshis who had come to Britain from the Sylhet region looking for better work.

That growing community required a place of worship, and the building at 59 Brick Lane was bought and refurbished.