Friends House

[1] Over time the Quakers obtained the lease of the building and adjoining ground and erected purpose-built meeting houses and offices.

[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.

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”.

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.

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] Norman Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica, spoke at a gathering at Friends House in the wake of the Notting Hill riots in 1958.

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] 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] On 21 September 2001, more than 2,000 people gathered in Friends House to begin the organised opposition to the War on Terror[18] Quakers in Britain hosted a climate emergency event on 22 April 2019, where Greta Thunberg spoke, urging people to pay attention to climate change.