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Exeter Synagogue is in Synagogue Place, Mary Arches Street within the old city of Exeter, Devon, and is the third oldest synagogue in the United Kingdom. Originally built as a Sephardi synagogue for Dutch Jews trading in Exeter, it is now a synagogue of the Ashkenazi rite. Exeter Hebrew Congregation itself existed shortly prior to its construction.

The Jews in Exeter have a long history, though there is currently little evidence to support the existence of a Jewish community in Roman Exeter. The first Jew in Exeter was mentioned in 1181.
With the accession of the Hanoverians to the throne of England, Jews of German origin settled in Exeter; and by 1757 the community had taken lease of a burial ground at Bull Meadow, just outside the city walls. On 5 November 1763, Abraham Ezekiel and Kitty Jacobs leased land in Mary Arches—via a local non-Jew, to avoid the restrictions on Jewish ownership of land—on which the present Exeter Synagogue was consecrated on 10 August 1764.
The Ezekiel family continued to lead and support the local community for 75 years, and special services were held in the synagogue for events such as the coronation of George IV and the death of Prince Albert. The community dwindled throughout the nineteenth century: in 1842 there were only about thirty families, and in 1878 there were fewer than ten. For much of the late 19th to the early 20th centuries, the Synagogue was located near the entrance to overcrowded slum dwellings one of the poorest areas of central Exeter. Regular services were abandoned in 1889.
Six years later the synagogue was revived by Charles Samuels, who was the community's leader until his death in 1944. The synagogue was damaged in the Second World War. Although small in numbers, the community today is spread widely over Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset and holds regular services using a variety of traditions.

The synagogue provides religious services, social activities, cultural events and other forms of contact for Jewish people, and for our many friends. They actively promote inter-faith understanding. The work that they do is for the good name of all Jewish people, whether they belong to a synagogue or not, and reaches many people, of all faiths and none, who seek them out.

The synagogue, by its very existence and antiquity, forms a focal point for the Jewish identity of many Jews living in the South West, of a wide variety of backgrounds, persuasions and commitments.
Members visit the sick in hospital, visit Jewish prisoners in local prisons and officiate at weddings and funerals. Thousands of school-children visit the synagogue each year, for most of whom it is their first contact with Jews and Judaism.

Direct visit - http://exetersynagogue.org.uk/visits.php