has been claimed that the design was also influenced by Christopher Wren, the architect of the nearby St Paul's Cathedral. The roof was destroyed by fire in 1738 and repaired in 1749. During the London Blitz the synagogue's silver, records and fittings were removed to a place of safety; the synagogue suffered only minor damage. The synagogue suffered some collateral damage from the IRA in 1992 and the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing, but this was restored. The essential original structure of the building thus remains today. 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 community saw a significant influx of crypto-Jews from Portugal fleeing the inquisition during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Marriage and circumcision records record couple as "Vindos de Portugal," or more rarely "Vindos de Espana," for the purpose of reconsecrating their vows now they were free to practice Judaism openly or undertaking an adult circumcision. Alongside migration from Sephardi centres such as Amsterdam and Livorno there was a steady influx of refugees from Portugal up until around 1735, after which it diminished, with some of the last recorded arrivals from Portugal as late as 1790. Records show arrivals escaping principally from major cities such as Lisbon or Porto and the remote borderland region from Spain, such as from Celerico de Beira, Guarda, Braganza or Belmonte. As a result of this migration the sermon at Bevis Marks took place in Portuguese until as late as 1833 when they switched to English. Influence For Sephardic Jews, the Bevis Marks Synagogue was a religious centre of the Anglo-Jewish world for more than a century, and served as a clearing-house for congregational and individual Jewish problems all over the world. These included the appeal of Jews in Jamaica for a reduction in taxation (1736), the internecine quarrel among Jews in Barbados (1753), and the aiding of seven-year-old Moses de Paz, who escaped from Gibraltar in 1777 to avoid a forced conversion to Christianity. The congregation came to the aid of the Jewish community in Ireland by donating funds to build a wall around the Ballybough Cemetery and providing an agent to oversee the works. The