Part of the former Blackfriars Priory site, it was used as a Quaker meeting house for nearly three hundred years, more recently serving as a registry office, a theatre, and a series of restaurants.

The meeting house was built adjoining the remains of the cloister of a Dominican Priory (see Blackfriars, Bristol) that was established by Maurice de Gaunt, c. 1227, just 12 years after St Dominic founded the order in 1215 and just 6 after it first came to England in 1221.

Their ministry was supported by Dennis Hollister, Member of Parliament for Somerset and prominent Bristol businessman and Baptist,[5] who housed them and hosted the cities first meetings for worship in his orchard in Broadmead (originally planted by the Dominicans and part of the Blackfriars estate) as well as in a room above his shop in High Street.

[9] In October 1669 George Fox and Margaret Fell, another key founding figure of early Quakerism, married in that first meeting house.

[10] In 1667 Bristol Friends proposed to construct a purpose built meeting house with outside space for a burial ground and began looking for possible sites.

They finally agreed on a site in the old Blackfriars Priory owned by Dennis Hollister during the time Fox and Fell were staying in the city for their wedding.

[12] The current meeting house was built in 1747–1749 by Quaker architect George Tully who had possibly modified John Wesley's New Room nearby around the same time in 1748.

[15] In 1828 the premises underwent a second significant enlargement with the purchase of the all parts the remaining Blackfriars Priory cloister not already owned by the meeting to serve as a school and a center of charity work.