Did you know?
Marks & Spencer began in 1884 as a single Penny Bazaar stall in Leeds Kirkgate Market, run by Michael Marks, a Jewish immigrant from what is now Belarus. His slogan was “Don’t ask the price, it’s a penny”.
Welcome to Kosher around the world, a new series in which we visit a city and look at its Jewish story through the lens of food, trade and daily life. We begin in Yorkshire. Leeds is not the first place many people think of when they think of kosher Britain, yet few cities have shaped the way the whole country shops and dresses quite as much. The story runs from a market stall to a vast clothing factory, and from the narrow streets of the Leylands to a fish and chip shop on Street Lane.
The first Jews to settle in Leeds in the eighteenth century were mostly German born, many of them wool merchants drawn by the West Yorkshire cloth trade. The community was tiny, about 60 people in 1840 and 219 by 1861. From around 1846 they prayed in a converted house on Back Rockingham Street, on ground that is now the Merrion Centre. In 1861 the Great Synagogue on Belgrave Street opened as the town’s first purpose built synagogue, and in 1878 the Leeds Jewish Board of Guardians opened an office next door to help families in need. Its successor, the Leeds Jewish Welfare Board, still serves the community today.
Everything changed in the 1880s, when Jews from the Russian Empire, most of them from Lithuania, began to arrive. Many came through Hull and Grimsby on their way to America, and many stayed. From roughly 1,000 people before the influx, the community grew to about 8,000 in 1891 and to between 12,000 and 14,000 by 1901, more than 6,000 of them in the low rent district known as the Leylands.
Tailoring became the defining trade. Herman Friend is remembered as the first Jew in Leeds to make clothes on a mass wholesale scale, from around 1856, and small workshops multiplied across the Leylands. The greatest name of all arrived in 1900 at the age of fifteen. He was Moshe Dovid Osinsky, born in the Kovno province of Lithuania in 1885, who became known to the world as Montague Burton. In 1921 he bought land on Hudson Road, and the factory he built there became the largest clothing factory in the world, employing more than 10,500 people at its height. For decades, a suit from Burton was simply what a British man wore to work, to a wedding or to a job interview.
Michael Marks came to Leeds in the early 1880s from what the M&S Archive describes as Russian Poland, today Belarus. He worked as a pedlar from 1882, and in 1884 he opened a Penny Bazaar in the outdoor section of Kirkgate Market. When he noticed that his penny items sold best, he adopted the famous slogan that everything on the stall cost a penny. By 1886 he had moved indoors to a pitch in the covered market, and on 28 September 1894 he went into partnership with Tom Spencer, a cashier who matched his investment of £300. Marks & Spencer was born.
Leeds has not forgotten. In 1984, for the centenary, a specially designed clock was unveiled under the central dome of the 1904 market hall, about 200 yards from the first stall. The company’s archive is housed in the Michael Marks Building at the University of Leeds, and visitors can follow a heritage trail from Kirkgate to the archive.
With refugees from the 1930s, children of the Kindertransport and survivors of the Holocaust, the community may have reached between 25,000 and 29,000 people around 1945 to 1950. Slum clearance in 1936 and 1937 had already begun a steady move north, first to Chapeltown, then to Moortown and Alwoodley, where most Jewish life in Leeds is found today. At the 2011 census, 6,847 people in the City of Leeds described themselves as Jewish, and in the Alwoodley ward they made up more than 14 per cent of residents.
The synagogues followed the community. Beth Hamidrash Hagadol, founded in 1874, moved to its Moortown building in 1969. The United Hebrew Congregation opened on Shadwell Lane in 1986, and Etz Chaim, the Reform Sinai Synagogue in Roundhay and the Chabad centre Shomrei Hadass all serve the north of the city.
The kosher high street is now centred on Street Lane and Harrogate Road. The local guide published by Chabad of Leeds lists a kosher bakery on Street Lane, a butcher and delicatessen on Harrogate Road, and Leeds Kosher Kitchen on Stonegate Road, which runs both a milky café and a meat restaurant. For everyday groceries, the same guide points shoppers to the kosher ranges at Tesco Roundhay and Sainsbury’s Moor Allerton. The city also has its own kashrut body, the Leeds Kashrut Authority, which is registered as a charity.
The most charming recent addition is a fish and chip shop. Marlow’s British Kitchen on Street Lane opened in September 2025 and soon began to offer kosher fish and chips, with separate fryers and a mashgiach present during the kosher service. Speaking to Jewish News in December 2025, Rabbi Anthony Gilbert called it the first time in 50 years that the community had a recognised kosher fish and chip shop at its heart. Kosher meals are served only at set times, so it is wise to check before you go.
Leeds shows how a community of pedlars, tailors and market traders helped shape the way Britain shops. If its story has given you an appetite, explore kosher food, baking and gifts from independent sellers on The Kosher Shop.
Sources: M&S Archive: The M&S story; M&S Archive: M&S in Leeds; Marks & Spencer, 2013; National Library of Israel: Sir Montague Burton; Wikipedia: History of the Jews in Leeds; Leeds Libraries: A Brief History of the Leeds Jewish Community; Chabad of Leeds: Local information; Jewish News, 4 December 2025; Charity Commission: Leeds Kashrut Authority.
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