QUAKERS' LONDON HOME

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10386, 4 May 1925, Page 2

QUAKERS' LONDON HOME

DEVONSHIRE HOUSE SOLD AN HISTORIC PROPERTY.

For over two> centuries the headquarters in London of the Society of Friends, Devonshire House, Bishopsgate, has, the society announces, been disposed of to the London and 1 Northern Estates Company. No figure is mentioned, but the site in the City oi London opposite Liverpool Street station is a very valuable one. New central offices and meeting houses are beino- built by the society on land formerly 0 occupied by Endsleigh Gardens, which was recently purchased. Tins building is to be known as "Friends House." . The sale terminates an occupancy by the society which commenced in 166f>. Like the mansion in Picadilly, which ras recently changed hands, the Bishopsgate house was once the town residence of the Devonshires, but during- the Civil "War it became a conventicle to which, under its nickname of "Fisher's Folly," reference is made in Butler's "Hud'ibras." Aiter the Great Fire destroyed the Bull and Mouth Inn, near Aldersgate, where the society held meetings in a large hired room, they became the tenants of part of the mansion. Later the freehold was acquired, and additions were subsequently made to it. One of the properties to be absorbed was the Dolphin Inn, which Stow described as "an old inn very large and <n good receipt," and in winch the first meeting of the East Indian Company was held in 1600. Upon this .site, purchased in 1792, were built the two largo meeting houses where the yearly meetings of the society have been he!' ever since, with only four exceptions. The 'ast addition was a small freehold bench* from Bethlehem Hospital, which had 'held it since 1330, if not earlier.