Site of the Deptford Quakers' Meeting House

Why is it significant?

The site of the Deptford Quakers' Meeting House on Deptford High Street in London is where Tsar Peter the Great of Russia unexpectedly attended pacifist Quaker services in the spring of 1698 while learning shipbuilding at the local dockyards. Demolished in 1807, the meeting house hosted conversations between the Tsar and Pennsylvania founder William Penn in Dutch. During his stay, Peter damaged nearby Sayes Court, breaking 300 panes of glass.

Key Facts

What to look for?

• The original Deptford Quakers' Meeting House was demolished in 1807, and its plaque building was demolished in 2018.
• Tsar Peter the Great arrived in London in January 1698 with an entourage that included four dwarfs.
• On 3 April 1698, Quaker Thomas Story presented Tsar Peter with Robert Barclay's famous Apology on Quaker theology.
• Pennsylvania founder William Penn conversed in Dutch with Peter the Great at the Deptford Quakers' Meeting House in 1698.
• Tsar Peter's stay at Sayes Court left 300 broken glass panes and 170 feet of damaged oak wainscoting.

Listen · 3:24

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

Picture, if you will, the spring of sixteen ninety-eight. A tall, restless young man — nearly seven feet tall, with a rough sailor's coat and ink-stained hands — walks up Deptford High Street toward a small, plain building right about where you're standing now. The Deptford Friends' Meeting House stood here, demolished in eighteen oh seven. And that young man? Tsar Peter 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?

Peeter was travelling incognito as part of Russia's Grand Embassy, under the alias Peeter Mikhai-lov — not to fool anyone, but rather to avoid the limitations and ceremony of state visits. He had come to Deptford 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 Molleson, had met the Tsar in London and presented him with a copy of Robert Barclay's famous Apology — the intellectual masterpiece of Quaker theology.

And Peeter was... intrigued. The Tsar was fascinated by Quaker principles and attended several meetings. Thomas Story explained to him why Quakers refused to bear arms — 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 — 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 — 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 Peeter is said to have sat was housed in various nearby Quaker Meeting Houses for centuries — including Blackheath — 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 Evelyn. Much worse damage was done to the house and grounds during Peeter's three-month stay — 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 — a place where the most powerful man in Russia sat in silence among pacifists... and listened.