Bennetts Hill

10, Bennetts Hill was the home and business premises of David Barnett, who was a jewellery merchant. He lived there with his business partner Samuel Neustadt and their families. Some of the Victorian buildings on this street have disappeared, but you can still see a blue plaque marking the site of no 11, which was the birthplace of the artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones. When he was a child in the 1830s, the young Edward was close friends with the children next door; his mother's memoirs include descriptions of life in the Neustadt/Barnett household.

‘The household was a Jewish one, and almost patriarchal in character; for the two partners of a firm of merchants established in Birmingham, Messrs. Neustadt and Barnett, had married two sisters, and both families including children, a widowed mother, and a maiden aunt, lived together under the same roof...They shared all their pleasures and amusements with [Edward], nor was he excluded even from their holy days and festivals. At the Feast of Purim he dressed up with the other children, and was so eager for the merry-making that when the day came round, he was always the first guest to arrive.’

Bertram Silverston, who was Chairman of the Congregation's governing Council and a Trustee in the 1920s-1940s, lived at 16 Bennetts Hill.