Friends House

Last updated

Friends House Friends Meeting House, Euston from Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1 - geograph.org.uk - 731459.jpg
Friends House

Friends House is a multi-use building at 173 Euston Road in London, England. The building houses the central offices of British Quakers and a conference centre. The building is also the principal venue for North West London Meeting and the Britain Yearly Meeting.

Contents

Friends House serves as a hub for an array of events, meetings, conferences, and gatherings for organisations and individuals. There is also a library (the Library of the Society of Friends), a café, a bookshop, a worship space, a courtyard, and garden on-site.

Background

Prior to 1926, the central offices of British Quakers were located in Devonshire House on Bishopsgate in the City of London. The Society of Friends had been renting rooms there since 1666, prior to which it had been the London home of the Dukes of Devonshire. [1] Over time the Quakers obtained the lease of the building and adjoining ground and erected purpose-built meeting houses and offices. By 1911, the site was no longer of sufficient size for the number of employees that worked there and a committee was set up to consider rebuilding or moving [2]

After a spirited debate among Quakers, it was agreed to sell the Devonshire House site and look for new premises. They purchased the freehold of Endsleigh Gardens for £45,000 in 1923. [2] The choice of Endsleigh Gardens was quite controversial, as it was a greenfield site, and the building of Friends House was criticised by The London Society. [3]

The building

After the new site had been purchased, five Quaker architects were invited to submit outline plans for the new facility. The specifications included a large meeting house capable of seating 1,500 people for Yearly Meeting, a smaller meeting house, office space and a library with strong rooms. [2]

The winning design was created by Hubert Lidbetter, who presented a simple and elegant neo-Georgian design of Portland stone and brick. It consisted of three distinct blocks, each with its own entrance. The eastern section, with the garden entrance, was designed for administration, the central block with the colonnaded entrance on Euston Road contained the large and small meeting spaces, and the west block, with its entrance on Gordon Street, was created for letting out. This western section is now known as Drayton House. [4]

The completed building won the RIBA Bronze medal in 1927 for the best building erected in London that year. It was described in the Architectural Review as "eminently Quakerly … [it] unites common sense with just so much relief from absolute plainness as gives pleasure to the eye". [5] It was Grade II-listed in May 1996. [4]

The large meeting house/The Light auditorium

In 2014, the large meeting house was refurbished by John McAslan + Partners, becoming The Light, a 1,000-delegate capacity auditorium. A 200-square-meter floor space and a skylight were created. In an echo of Hubert Lidbetter’s 1927 RIBA bronze medal, The Light won a RIBA Regional award in 2015. [6] It continues to be the primary venue for Britain Yearly Meeting.

Garden

The Friends House garden links Euston Road and Endsleigh Gardens, through a path that is open from the early morning to the late afternoon. In 2016, the garden was relandscaped, following a design by Quaker horticulturist Wendy Price and John Mc Aslan + Partners inspired by the Waldo Williams poem "In Two Fields". [7]

A pathway was added, carved with a timeline of more than twenty key Quaker dates “highlighting significant points through three centuries, from persecution to permission to worship and marry; and commitment to tackle issues around slavery, landmines, mental health, justice, sexuality and sustainability”. [7]

Meeting rooms

Within Friends House are numerous meeting rooms and conference halls of varying sizes. All the meeting rooms are named after prominent Quakers and peace campaigners, including Bayard Rustin, Lucretia Mott, John Woolman, Ada Salter, Waldo Williams, George Bradshaw, Kathleen Lonsdale, Abraham Darby, Hilda Clark, Marjorie Sykes, Margaret Fell , Sarah Fell, Benjamin Lay, Elizabeth Fry and George Fox. [8]

The Library

Friends House is home to the Library of the Society of Friends. This collection dates from the 1650s, and includes the records and archives of Britain Yearly Meeting as well as one of the largest collections of Quaker books and material in the world. [9] Highlights of the collection include the diaries of Elizabeth Fry, the anti-slavery pamphlet collection and the Swarthmore manuscripts: over 1400 letters of the first Quakers. [10]

Notable events at Friends House

Visit of Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi visited the UK in 1931 for the Round Table Conferences discussing constitutional reforms in India. He made his first public speech in London in the large meeting house in Friends House. [11]

Housewives cost-of-living protest

Hundreds of women gathered at Friends House on 23 February 1938 to speak about how the cost of living had affected them. Several women spoke, including a young housewife who said: "We do not ask for strawberries and cream, we only ask for bread and butter." A petition of over 500,000 women’s signatures protesting against the government’s handling of the crisis was handed to Clement Attlee, then leader of the opposition. [12]

Visit of Norman Manley

Norman Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica, spoke at a gathering at Friends House in the wake of the Notting Hill riots in 1958. Manley told the large crowd, many of whom were people of African-Caribbean heritage that he was “here to let you know that you have governments that care for you, to challenge decent British public opinion to stamp out things that would shame even a Southern State in the United States of America”. [13]

International Conference for Sanctions against South Africa

The first international conference on sanctions against South Africa was called by the Anti-Apartheid Movement in April 1964. It was chaired by Mongi Slim and attended by representatives from 29 different countries. [14] Oliver Tambo, at that time deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC), spoke about the racial injustice in South Africa, asking: "what is to be the end of the world's abhorrence of apartheid, if the world supports apartheid materially?" [15]

Visit of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin

Martin Luther King Jr. was introduced at a lunch reception in Friends House by Bayard Rustin. The reception had been arranged by the Quaker Peace and Race Relations Committees, and was part of King’s visit to London ahead of his Nobel Prize ceremony. [16]

Break-in by South African Intelligence Services

In December 1971, the offices of the Britain Yearly Meeting were broken into, allegedly by the South African Intelligence Services, and documents of the Friends Peace and International Relations Committee relating to their membership and work with South Africa were stolen [17]

Stop the War Coalition

On 21 September 2001, more than 2,000 people gathered in Friends House to begin the organised opposition to the War on Terror [18]

Visit of Greta Thunberg

Quakers in Britain hosted a climate emergency event on 22 April 2019, where Greta Thunberg spoke, urging people to pay attention to climate change. [19]

Related Research Articles

The views of Quakers around the world towards homosexuality encompass a range from complete celebration and the practice of same-sex marriage, to the view that homosexuality is sinfully deviant and contrary to God's intentions for sexual expression. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) is a historically Christian religious movement founded in 17th-century England; it has around 350,000 members. In Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, many Quakers are supportive of homosexual relationships, while views are divided among U.S. meetings. Many Conservative Friends and Holiness Friends, both of which have retained traditional Quaker practices such as plain dress, along with Evangelical Friends, view homosexual acts as sinful. 49% of Quakers live in Africa, and though views may differ, the Kenyan Church of Friends does not support homosexual relationships.

<i>The Friend</i> (Quaker magazine) Quaker magazine founded in 1843

The Friend is a weekly Quaker magazine published in London, UK. It is the only Quaker weekly in the world, and has been published continuously since 1843. It began as a monthly and in January 1892 became a weekly. It is one of the oldest continuously published publications in the world still in operation. Others which began publication before The Friend have had lengthy interruptions in publication and/or have closed down.

Meeting for Sufferings is an executive committee of Britain Yearly Meeting, the body which acts on behalf of members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Great Britain and the Crown Dependencies. It has about 200 members who meet five times a year to make decisions when the Yearly Meeting is not in session.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Britain Yearly Meeting</span> Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, also known as Britain Yearly Meeting, is a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It is the national organisation of Quakers living in Britain. Britain Yearly Meeting refers to both the religious gathering and the organisation. "Yearly Meeting", or "Yearly Meeting Gathering" are usually the names given to the annual gathering of British Quakers. Quakers in Britain is the name the organisation is commonly known by.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Euston Square</span> Location in London

Euston Square is a large square in the London Borough of Camden in Central London. It lies on Euston Road, and Euston railway station and Euston bus station are on its northernmost side. Although “Euston Square” strictly refers to the square, in day to day use the name is often used to refer to Euston Square tube station, whose entrance is at the junction of Euston Road and North Gower Street. The southern half of the square was built over in the 1920s, leaving Euston Square Gardens on the north side in front of Euston station.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Quakers</span>

The Religious Society of Friends began as a proto-evangelical Christian movement in England in the mid-17th century in Ulverston. Members are informally known as Quakers, as they were said "to tremble in the way of the Lord". The movement in its early days faced strong opposition and persecution, but it continued to expand across the British Isles and then in the Americas and Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quakers in Africa</span>

There are about 180,000 members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, in Africa. African Friends make up around 49% of Friends internationally, the largest proportion on any one continent. Kenya has the largest number of Quakers in a single nation—about 119,000 in the year 2017. The three main denominations of Friends, Friends United Meeting, Friends General Conference, and Evangelical Friends Church International, all have affiliated Yearly Meetings (associations) in Africa. There are also independent meetings in several African nations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yearly Meeting</span> Regional associations of Quaker congregations that meet annually

Yearly Meeting is an organization composed of constituent meetings or churches of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, within a geographical area. The constituent meetings are called Monthly Meetings in most of the world; in England, local congregations are now called Area Meetings, in Australia Monthly Meetings are called Regional Meetings. "Monthly" and "Yearly" refer to how often the body meets to make decisions. Monthly Meetings may be local congregations that hold regular Meetings for Worship, or may comprise a number of Worship Groups. Depending on the Yearly Meeting organization, there may also be Quarterly Meetings, Half-Yearly Meetings, or Regional Meetings, where a number of local Monthly Meetings come together within a Yearly Meeting.

The Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) is a Quaker organisation that works to communicate between all parts of Quakerism. FWCC's world headquarters is in London. It has General Consultative NGO status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations since 2002. FWCC shares responsibility for the Quaker UN Office in Geneva and New York City with the American Friends Service Committee and Britain Yearly Meeting.

The World Gathering of Young Friends is the name of several gatherings of members of the Religious Society of Friends between the ages of 18 and 35. There have been two gatherings by this name; the first in 1985 in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States, and the second in 2005 in Lancaster, England, and Mombasa, Kenya. Though these gatherings are the first that were truly worldwide in scope, they followed many gatherings of a similar sort of Friends from North America and Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Devonshire House</span> Former London residence of the Dukes of Devonshire

Devonshire House in Piccadilly, was the London townhouse of the Dukes of Devonshire during the 18th and 19th centuries. Following a fire in 1733 it was rebuilt by William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, in the Palladian style, to designs by William Kent. Completed circa 1740, it stood empty after the First World War and was demolished in 1924.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quakers</span> Family of Christian religious movements

Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after John 15:14 in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers because the founder of the movement, George Fox, told a judge to quake "before the authority of God". The Friends are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to be guided by the inward light to "make the witness of God" known to everyone. Quakers have traditionally professed a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity, as well as Nontheist Quakers. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa followed by 22% in North America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quakers in Europe</span> Religious movement in Europe

The Quaker movement began in England in the 17th Century. Small Quaker groups were planted in various places across Europe during this early period. Quakers in Europe outside Britain and Ireland are not very numerous (2023) although new groups have started in the former Soviet Union and successor countries. By far the largest national grouping of Quakers in Europe is in Britain. As of 2017, there were around 32,100 Quakers (Friends) in Europe.

A Book of Discipline may refer to one of the various books issued by a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, setting out what it means to be a Quaker in that Yearly Meeting. The common name for this book varies from one Yearly Meeting to another and includes Book of Discipline, Faith and Practice, Christian Faith and Practice, Quaker Faith and Practice, Church Government and Handbook of Practice and Procedure. Each Book of Discipline is updated periodically by each Yearly Meeting according to the usual practice of decision making within the Religious Society of Friends.

John Lampen is a Quaker peace educator and writer. He is married to Diana Lampen. In 1987, he gave the Swarthmore Lecture, entitled Mending Hurts.

James Spencer-Bell, known until 1866 as James Bell, was a British Liberal Party politician. He was a member of parliament (MP) for Guildford from 1852 until 1857.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quaker Gardens, Islington</span> Public garden and former burial ground in London

Quaker Gardens is a small public garden in the extreme south of the London Borough of Islington, close to the boundary with the City of London, in the area known historically as Bunhill Fields. It is managed by Islington Borough Council. It comprises the surviving fragment of a former burying ground for Quakers, in use from 1661 to 1855. George Fox, one of the founders of the movement, was among those buried here.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Endsleigh Gardens</span> Street in Camden, London, England

Endsleigh Gardens is a street in the Bloomsbury district of central London, in the London Borough of Camden. It runs south-west to north-east from Gordon Street to Woburn Place. The south-west end becomes Gower Place after the junction with Gordon Street. Taviton Street and Endsleigh Street run off the south side.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Springfield Friends Meeting</span>

Springfield Friends Meeting is an historic Quaker meeting located in High Point, North Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horsham Friends Meeting House</span> Quaker meeting house in England

Horsham Friends Meeting House is a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) place of worship in the town of Horsham, part of the district of the same name in West Sussex, England. It was built in 1786 to replace a meeting house nearly 100 years older on the same site, built for a Quaker community which had been active in the town for several years. "A fine Georgian building with original furnishings", it has Grade II listed status.

References

  1. ↑ Sefton-Jones, Margaret (1923). Old Devonshire House by Bishopsgate. London: Swarthmore Press.
  2. 1 2 3 Clark, Joanna (2006). Eminently Quakerly : the building of Friends House. London: Quaker Books. ISBN   0852453965.
  3. ↑ The London Society (1927). London Squares and How to Save Them. London: The London Society.
  4. 1 2 Historic England. "Official List Entry: Friends House, and Drayton House, with walls, railings, and garden to east". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  5. ↑ Dent, Alwyn R. (23 November 1927). "The new home of the Quakers". The Architects Journal: 671–679.
  6. ↑ "Friends House wins architectural award". thefriend.org. 28 May 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  7. 1 2 Van Stavren, Anne (27 April 2016). "Friends House garden transformed". Quakers in Britain. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  8. ↑ "Meeting Rooms". Friends House. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  9. ↑ Hicks, Muriel A. (1960). "Friends' Reference Library, 1901-1959". The Journal of the Friends Historical Society. 49 (3). doi:10.14296/fhs.v49i3.4584.
  10. ↑ "Library collections". Quakers in Britain. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  11. ↑ "Mr. Gandhi in England with a travelling spinning-wheel". The Illustrated London News. 19 September 1931. p. 135.
  12. ↑ "Four wives with 'voice' of 500,000 fighting cost of living". The Daily Herald. 24 February 1938. p. 13.
  13. ↑ ""I come with a challenge" - Mr Manley". The Birmingham Daily Post. 8 September 1958. p. 30.
  14. ↑ Hoskyns, Catherine (July 1964). "International Conference on Economic Sanctions Against South Africa". The Journal of Modern African Studies. 2 (2): 299–300. doi:10.1017/S0022278X00004122. ISSN   1469-7777.
  15. ↑ ""Apartheid - the Indictment": Paper Presented to the International Conference for Sactions agains [sic] South Africa by O. R. Tambo, April 1964 | South African History Online". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  16. ↑ "Dr. Martin Luther King at Friends House". The Friend. December 1964. p. 1493.
  17. ↑ "HL Deb South African Intelligence Activities, 9 December 1971, Volume 326". UK Parliament Hansard. 1971.
  18. ↑ "Millions marched with Stop the War". Socialist Worker. 6 September 2011. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
  19. ↑ "Quakers host Greta Thunberg and support climate activists". Quakers in Britain. 22 April 2019. Retrieved 20 October 2023.

51°31′35″N0°07′57″W / 51.5263°N 0.1326°W / 51.5263; -0.1326

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.