Members of The Society of Friends (better known as Quakers) have been living and worshipping in Hammersmith since 1658 when Hammersmith and Chiswick were farming villages.
The Quakers had begun spreading their form of Christianity in the North of England a few years earlier.
George Fox, the Quakers’ founder, taught that all men and women possess an inward light that can lead them to the Truth. People seeking God, he said, can follow this inner prompting and do not need church ministers – a view highly unpopular with religious authorities and the state.
“Twelve Quakers quite still”
Nothing daunted, Fox and his followers travelled south to spread the word. One of their converts was Sarah Blackborow (or Blackberry), who came to Hammersmith from the City of London and persuaded a local woman named Hester Matson to hold a Quaker meeting in her home.
Hester’s husband heard negative reports of Quakers from his workmates and forbade any more meetings. The Quakers moved to the house of William Bond in Chiswick and shortly afterwards to a place halfway between Chiswick and Hammersmith.
During this time and for decades to come, hundreds of Quakers were jailed as dissenters against the Church of England. Sarah Blackborow and other Quaker women visited and nursed their comrades in jail and established an enduring Quaker commitment to prison care and reform.
In 1677, nineteen years after their first gathering, the Quakers of Hammersmith built their first Meeting House at 28 Lower Mall, on the site that is now part of Furnivall Gardens. A tributary of the Thames known as Hammersmith Creek ran through this area.
The Meeting House stood among a network of narrow alleyways close to the High Bridge that used to cross the creek. In the 1760s part of the Meeting House was rebuilt. Its garden was planted with mulberry and walnut trees as was its burial ground – part of which is under the A4 today.
By the 1870's rural Hammersmith had become a suburb of London. The narrow streets around the Meeting House were home to urban workers and their families living in overcrowded and often squalid conditions. The Quakers became a hub of vital support for this community. They opened ‘First-day’ (Sunday) schools for children and adults and held Mothers’ Meetings and social evenings.