Quaker London history walk returns
'The walk focuses on Quakers who were in business in the City of London from about 1660.'
A popular guided walk highlighting Quaker history in the heart of London’s financial district will return this month, thanks to a Hertfordshire Friend.
Valerie Coast, of St Albans Meeting, is resuming the guided walk after the event was stopped due to the pandemic. The walk focuses on Quakers who were in business in the City of London from about 1660. These included goldsmiths, apothecaries, clockmakers, architects, bankers and social reformers. Some of these businesses still survive today and are part of well-known multinationals.
Valerie Coast told the Friend that the walk offers a different look at City businesses, which developed alongside what was then a very new, and radical, religious group. ‘I was prompted to look at the history of Quakers in the City of London having read that at one time Quakers were a quarter of the population there. (Even if that figure was wrong, maybe ten per cent out, it would still be a lot of Quakers!) I also happened to walk by George Yard, off Lombard Street. This is where the 1783 Quaker Abolition Pamphlet was printed in 2 George Yard by James Phillips, Quaker Printer.’
The walk starts at the Bank of England and moves along to Lombard Street, Gracechurch Street, Bevis Marks Synagogue, Bishopsgate, and Worship Street, through to Bunhill Dissenters Burial Ground and Bunhill Meeting House.
Valerie Coast said that most of the other buildings are long gone. ‘I came across much of the info I have by accident: instrument and clockmakers, goldsmiths becoming bankers, a master plasterer who was a woman, an apothecary which is now part of a multinational, the man who named the clouds, an architect who built the oldest synagogue – all of them in this small area of London. Another great accidental find was Rocque’s 1746 map of the City, which shows Quaker Meetings as QM, so I could pinpoint exact locations, and many of these courts and alleys of London are still there, but not the original buildings.’
Starting as a trip for her local walking group and then her University of the Third Age (U3A) group, word gradually spread, partly after it was mentioned in the U3A national magazine. Valerie said she was amazed by the response, and by the time Covid hit the country, she had taken over 500 people on the walk. ‘What I learned is that people are curious about Quakers – they’ve heard of us and our good, historical deeds, but know nothing about us really, apart of course that “We sit in silence”. This phrase is one I would like to see eliminated, as it gives such a poor idea about us. My take is to tell them that I wait in the quiet for inspiration.’
The walk will resume on 17 May.
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