Site of the Deptford Quakers' Meeting House

The site of the Deptford Quakers' Meeting House in London is where Tsar Peter the Great of Russia attended pacifist worship services and met William Penn in 1698. Demolished in 1807, the original meeting house stood on Deptford High Street while the Tsar studied shipbuilding at local dockyards. During his three-month stay, Peter the Great discussed religious principles in Dutch with Penn before returning to build Russia's military.

London Β· from the walk β€œThe Tsar's Deptford” Β· Generated

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146 Deptford High Street, SE8

Why did Tsar Peter the Great visit the Deptford Quakers' Meeting House in 1698?

Picture, if you will, the spring of sixteen ninety-eight. A tall, restless young man β€” nearly seven feet tall, with a rough sailor's coat and ink-stained hands β€” walks up Dept-ford High Street toward a small, plain building right about where you're standing now. The Dept-ford Friends' Meeting House stood here, demolished in eighteen oh seven. And that young man? Tsar Pee-ter the Great of Russia, who had arrived in England in January sixteen ninety-eight with a large entourage that included four dwarfs.

Now... what on Earth was an autocratic Russian tsar doing at a Quaker meeting house?

Pee-ter was travelling incognito as part of Russia's Grand Embassy, under the alias Pee-ter Mikhai-lov β€” not to fool anyone, but rather to avoid the limitations and ceremony of state visits. He had come to Dept-ford to learn the latest shipbuilding techniques at the dockyards. But on the third of April, something unexpected happened. A Quaker named Thomas Story, along with Gilbert Mol-leson, had met the Tsar in London and presented him with a copy of Robert Barclay's famous Apology β€” the intellectual masterpiece of Quaker theology.

And Pee-ter was... intrigued. The Tsar was fascinated by Quaker principles and attended several meetings. Thomas Story explained to him why Quakers refused to bear arms β€” a concept utterly Alien to this man who was building the most powerful military in Eastern Europe.

But the most extraordinary encounter happened here. It is believed that William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, also worshipped at this very Quaker house. Penn and the Tsar happened to meet in England during the Tsar's visit in sixteen ninety-eight, and were able to converse together in the Dutch language β€” Penn had learned Dutch from his mother, and apparently the Tsar's Dutch was better than his English, having spent months in the shipyards of Holland.

Imagine that conversation. Two men who could not be more different β€” one who believed in pacifism, democracy, and religious freedom... the other who would execute his own son for treason. And yet they sat together, probably on that very bench...

A bench on which Pee-ter is said to have sat was housed in various nearby Quaker Meeting Houses for centuries β€” including Blackheath β€” until it mysteriously disappeared a few years ago.

Meanwhile, just streets away, the Tsar was living at Sayes Court, the elegant home of diarist John EV-elyn. Much worse damage was done to the house and grounds during Pee-ter's three-month stay β€” paintings were used for target practice, and the gardens were damaged by numerous wheelbarrow races. Among the items needing repair: three hundred broken panes of glass, one hundred seventy feet of oak wainscoting, and two hundred forty feet of fencing.

The building that held the plaque here was itself demolished in twenty eighteen. So this spot exists now only in memory β€” a place where the most powerful man in Russia sat in silence among pacifists... and listened.

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