The Honorary President is listed as Dr. M. Gaster. The Honorary Vice-President is Sir Francis Montefiore and the President is listed as Rev. S.J. Roco.

In 1698 Rabbi David Nieto took spiritual charge of a congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews that met in a small synagogue in Creechurch Lane. A considerable influx of Jews made it necessary to obtain more commodious quarters. Accordingly a committee was appointed, consisting of António Gomes Serra, Menasseh Mendes, Alfonso Rodrigues, Manuel Nunez Miranda, Andrea Lopez, and Pontaleão Rodriguez. It investigated matters for nearly a year, and on February 12, 1699, signed a contract with Joseph Avis, a Quaker, for the construction of a building to cost £2,750. Avis would later decline to collect his fee, on the ground that it was wrong to profit from building a house of God. On 24 June of the same year, the committee leased from Lady Ann Pointz (alias Littleton) and Sir Thomas Pointz (alias Littleton) a tract of land at Plough Yard, in Bevis Marks, for 61 years, with the option of renewal for a further 38 years, at £120 a year.

Avis began building at once, reportedly incorporating in the roof a beam from a royal ship presented to the community by Queen Anne. The structure was completed and dedicated in 1702, and, with the exception of the roof (which was destroyed by fire in 1738 and repaired in 1749), is today as it was over 300 years ago. The interior decor and furnishing and layout of the synagogue reflect the influence of the great Amsterdam synagogue of 1677.

In 1747 Benjamin Mendes da Costa bought the lease of the ground on which the building stood, and presented it to the congregation, vesting the deeds in the names of a committee consisting of Gabriel Lopez de Britto, David Aboab Ozorio, Moses Gomes Serra, David Franco, Joseph Jessurun Rodriguez, and Moses Mendes da Costa. The Bevis Marks Synagogue was for more than a century the religious center of the Anglo-Jewish world, and served as a clearing-house for congregational and individual troubles all the world over; e.g., the appeal of the Jamaican Jews for a reduction in taxation (1736); the internecine quarrel among the Barbados Jews (1753); and the aiding of seven-year-old Moses de Paz, who escaped from Gibraltar in 1777 to avoid an enforced conversion.

As the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community grew and moved out of the City and East End of London to the West End and the suburbs, there was demand for a new synagogue to be opened in the West End. At first this was refused, leading to the breakaway synagogue in Burton Street that later became the West London Synagogue. In 1866 a branch synagogue was opened in Bryanston Street, Bayswater, after which the attendance at Bevis Marks declined so much that in 1886 a move to sell the site was contemplated; a Bevis Marks Anti-Demolition League was founded, under the auspices of H. Guedalla and A. H. Newman, and the proposed move was abandoned.

In 1896 a new synagogue was built at Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, as successor to the Bryanston Street synagogue. This is today the principal synagogue of the Spanish and Portuguese community.