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.
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
editPrior 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
editAfter 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
editIn 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
editThe 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
editWithin 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
editFriends 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
editVisit of Mahatma Gandhi
editMahatma 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
editHundreds 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
editNorman 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
editThe 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
editMartin 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
editIn 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]
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
editQuakers in Britain hosted a climate emergency event on 22 April 2019, where Greta Thunberg spoke, urging people to pay attention to climate change.[19]
References
edit- ^ Sefton-Jones, Margaret (1923). Old Devonshire House by Bishopsgate. London: Swarthmore Press.
- ^ a b c Clark, Joanna (2006). Eminently Quakerly : the building of Friends House. London: Quaker Books. ISBN 0852453965.
- ^ The London Society (1927). London Squares and How to Save Them. London: The London Society.
- ^ a b 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.
- ^ Dent, Alwyn R. (23 November 1927). "The new home of the Quakers". The Architects Journal: 671–679.
- ^ "Friends House wins architectural award". thefriend.org. 28 May 2015. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
- ^ a b Van Stavren, Anne (27 April 2016). "Friends House garden transformed". Quakers in Britain. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
- ^ "Meeting Rooms". Friends House. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
- ^ Hicks, Muriel A. (1960). "Friends' Reference Library, 1901-1959". The Journal of the Friends Historical Society. 49 (3). doi:10.14296/fhs.v49i3.4584.
- ^ "Library collections". Quakers in Britain. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
- ^ "Mr. Gandhi in England with a travelling spinning-wheel". The Illustrated London News. 19 September 1931. p. 135.
- ^ "Four wives with 'voice' of 500,000 fighting cost of living". The Daily Herald. 24 February 1938. p. 13.
- ^ ""I come with a challenge" - Mr Manley". The Birmingham Daily Post. 8 September 1958. p. 30.
- ^ 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.
- ^ ""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.
- ^ "Dr. Martin Luther King at Friends House". The Friend. December 1964. p. 1493.
- ^ "HL Deb South African Intelligence Activities, 9 December 1971, Volume 326". UK Parliament Hansard. 1971.
- ^ "Millions marched with Stop the War". Socialist Worker. 6 September 2011. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
- ^ "Quakers host Greta Thunberg and support climate activists". Quakers in Britain. 22 April 2019. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
External links
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