The drift of Sephardi Jews away from East London gathered pace leading to diminished presence at Bevis Marks and the need for a new synagogue.

[5] The nineteenth century history of Lauderdale Road is wrapped up with the Sephardi families of what the chronicler of Jewish life in Britain Chaim Bermant called "the Cousinhood" or the Victorian Anglo-Jewish gentry.

Lauderdale Road also played a key role in both the emergence of Zionism in the United Kingdom and the worldwide effort to compile Sephardi heritage.

[9] The role of senior rabbi was filled by the Sephardi scholar Rabbi Shem Tob Gaugine 1920-1953, who led a large scale ethnographic effort to compile the full diversity of Sephardi and Mizrahi customs and approach to Jewish law, compiled in the multi-volume Keter Shem Tob.

During World War Two the synagogue suffered bomb damage along with much of the surrounding area due to German air raids.

Sir Philip Sassoon, who between 1924 and 1929 and again from 1931 until 1937 when he served as Under-Secretary of State for Air and in 1937 was First Commissioner of Works until his death in 1939, was a member and donor to the community.

[3] Lauderdale Road's history in the late twentieth century was defined and revived by a new wave of Jewish migration to London.

The names of the Yehidim were still for the most part Sephardi, whatever those of their mothers may have been, but the Lopezes, the Baruch Lousadas, the Gonzales, the Nunes, and others of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, savouring of the peninsula, had become exceptional.

[9] Over the course of the twentieth century the community welcomed Jewish refugee and immigrant families from across North Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Today the community has families with historic origins across the Sephardi diaspora, including Iraq, India, Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Gibraltar and frequently hosts events, talks and religious ceremonies honouring them all.

Associated with the community are its Beth Din, Sephardi Kashrut Authority, JewishChoice Elderly Care Campus, the Montefiore Endowment, alongside various cemeteries and charities.

[citation needed] To accommodate young families a La Petite Nursery, a Jewish daycare centre for small children opened on site.

[18] In reverence to its Victorian heritage,[clarification needed] Lauderdale Road is one of very few synagogues where the rabbis and wardens continue to wear traditional top hats.

"[9] This evolving style reflects the continuing link and evolution from Lauderdale Road's history as the synagogue of the Sephardi Anglo-Jewish gentry, or "Cousinhood" as it became a globalised, pan-Sephardi community.