During this time (see History of the Jews in England), the area was home to many Jewish refugees from Russia and Central Europe.[11] 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. Of the East European Jewish emigrants, 140 000 settled in Britain.[12] From 1916, the synagogue's leader was the notable Abraham Isaac Kook, later the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandatory Palestine. Nearby was the purpose-built Great Synagogue of London and another church building that had become a Jewish place of worship, the Sandys Row Synagogue.