Exhibition: Country Houses, Jewish Homes

The exhibition explores how Jews arrived in Britain, and fought for the right to acquire land and the political rights and social status that came with it

This was a society still structured by Christianity and dominated by the landed aristocracy. What did a home like Gunnersbury mean for a family of European Jewish immigrants like the Rothschilds? Was it easy to lead a Jewish life in the countryside? And what did those Jews who bought country houses bring to the places they came to call home?

From the early struggles for religious equality in Georgian Britain to the rise of modern political antisemitism and the tragedy of the Holocaust, this exhibition tells an untold story of prejudice and integration, difference and belonging. It illuminates what it means to be British, and the changing place of both Jews and the country house in British life.