At the heart of one Merseyside borough sits a building older than the town. itself.
St Helens as we know it did not exist until the mid 19th century becoming a town in 1868. However, in the town centre, lies a building which dates back much further than this,. The Friends (Quakers) Meeting house, in Church Street, is the oldest building in the town in continual use.
The cottage-like house was built by The Quaker religious movement as a place of worship around 1679 and is an important part of the town's history and culture.
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Quakers belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("the Friends") are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to experience the light within or see "that of God in every one".
The meeting house is a two-storey stone building, with a stone-slate roof and bay windows. Above the entrance sits a sundial, a device used to tell the time of day based off the position of the sun in the sky. The sundial dates back to around 1753.
The industrial revolution caused the population of St Helens to shoot up. In 1801, the population of the four townships that made up St Helens was 7,570.
By 1821 it was about 10,000 and by 1851 about 15,000. St Helens continued to grow rapidly in the late century and by 1900 it had a population of around 84,000. The Quaker building is protected as grade II listed as a result of its historical and cultural importance to the town, and is easily accessible- sitting close to both railway and bus stations.
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