I hear a planning application has gone in for the site of Carmel College, the Jewish boarding school in Oxfordshire which closed 15 years ago.

As well as building 166 homes in the grounds, developers want a swimming pool, jacuzzi and café in the former synagogue.

The building is the only post-War Grade II-listed synagogue, Jewish Heritage UK director Sharman Kadish told the local council.

While knowing of “no precedents in Britain for converting synagogues into swimming pools”, she thought the scheme imaginative. But there was a rabbinic rule, she noted, against turning shuls into bath-houses.