Quakers Friars

Quakers Friars is a Grade 1 Listed building in Broadmead, Bristol. 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. It is an important site in both the early history of the Dominican Order in England and of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

The Blackfriars Priory
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. Llywelyn ap Dafydd the eldest son and heir of Dafydd ap Gruffudd (Prince of Wales 1282–1283) was buried here in 1287. He had died while imprisoned at nearby Bristol Castle where he had been confined since 1283. The Priory was dissolved in 1538 and later partitioned and sold off, in part to the Smiths and Cutlers Company and the Bakers Company as their guildhalls as well as a number of private dwellings. Later much of the land came into the possession of Dennis Hollister.

The Quakers in Bristol & Broadmead Great Meeting
Quakerism arrived in Bristol in 1654 with John Audland and John Camm, two of a group of traveling ministers known as the Valiant Sixty who had been inspired by the spiritual message of George Fox (the founder of Quakerism) during his early missionary journeys around Lancashire and Westmorland. Camm and Audland were both from what is now Cumbria. Their ministry was supported by Dennis Hollister, Member of Parliament for Somerset and prominent Bristol businessman and Baptist, 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. Hollister’s enthusiasm was sparked by earlier contact with the Quaker message in London and was a scandal to many prominent citizens of Bristol. In spite of opposition this first mission attracted a large amount of attention among all classes in the city and many were apparently convinced. As Audland and Camm wrote in an epistle ‘To all dear friends who love the Light in and about Bristol’ in 1654: “Every day we have a meeting; yea I may say every day is a meeting for go where we will all is full where we are both night and day… the house was all filled so the street: so the voice went forth.”

George Fox first visited the Bristol Friends in 1656 and records meeting indoors at Broadmead in his Journal. These were held in a building on the site of the current Broadmead Baptist Church known as the ‘Great Meeting House’. In October 1669 George Fox and Margaret Fell, another key founding figure of early Quakerism, married in that first meeting house.

Old Friars Meeting House
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. The process caused some disagreement in the meeting. 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. The current Quaker Friars site was purchased by the meeting at that time in 1669, the existing east range of the Dominican Priory was demolished, and a new meeting house was erected in 1670 at a cost of £655 according to meeting records. At the same time the Baptists took over the earlier Broadmead Great Meeting House in 1671, having seemingly used part of the priory cloister as their chapel before.

In 1746 Bristol meeting recorded that the old meeting house was becoming too small for the community in spite of the fact it now incorporated much of the remaining priory buildings (including the Cutlets Hall and the Bakers Hall) through various purchases. In 1747 the old meeting house was demolished and more property was purchased to build an enlarged meeting house with new carriage access. Among these properties was the “Old Orchard”, the same orchard where Camm and Audland had held the first meetings 90 years earlier.

New Friars Meeting House
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. Much of the molding and detailed work was done by Thomas Paty. It is a grand galleried space arranged around a central ministers gallery with eight Doric columns and an overhead square lantern light with tower (hidden in recent renovations) - there was also much elegant wooden decoration within prior to 1956. The building works and materials cost £1,830 with land purchases and legal fees of £261. It was a landmark in Quaker meeting house design, as Nicholas Pevsner observed Quakers Friars must be “the first building of the Quakers to accept this degree of monumentality or display.” Some conservative Friends at the time believed it to be too ornate and a waste of money better spent relieving poverty.

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.

In 1954 the meeting decided to sell the entire Quakers Friars site - both the meeting house and the old Blackfriars cloister - and build a smaller meeting house. It was sold as a unitary lot to Bristol City Council and the Quakers finally ceased meeting on the site in 1956. The Friars Meeting (now Bristol Central Friends Meeting) continues to meet nearby every Sunday in a new meeting house on Champion Square opened in 1958.

Today
After 1956 the Building was used as a register office, before being renovated as part of the Cabot Circus development and used as a succession of restaurants.

It has been designated by Historic England as a grade I listed building.

It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.