In 1907, when Sir Ebenezer Howard’s dream of a first Garden City was in embryo, an eminent Quaker lady from London with a Quaker’s social conscience came to Letchworth. This was Miss Annie Jane Lawrence, the daughter of Mary and Alfred Lawrence whose prosperous forebears had all distinguished themselves by social and civic deeds - one becoming Lord Mayor of London, another being instrumental in the formation of the City and Guilds Institute. Alfred Lawrence himself, a staunch upholder of responsibility to the poor and needy, died young of consumption, leaving his widow with five children of whom Miss Annie Jane Lawrence was the third.
    Severely deaf and dependent on ear trumpets, Annie Jane leased a plot of land to the south of Letchworth on high ground and commissioned The Cloisters. For the purpose, building materials were imported from the many parts of the world visited by Miss Lawrence during her formative years. On 28 January 1907, Miss Lawrence dedicated The Cloisters to “the unity, eternal reality, through all diverse, temporary and fragmented seemings, the perfect inviolable whole, wherein sin and pain and death are not and all contradictions are reconciled, all discords resolved, I dedicate this building, confident that through progressive recognition of this unity, mankind will ascend to a full harmonious and joyful expression of life, in soul, in body and social organisation.”
    The building was intended to be a school of psychology with accommodation for 20 residential students who would share the necessary domestic duties and live simply in fresh air, with the principal object of study being “how thought affects action and what causes and produces thought”. The main design of the institution was to provide conditions favourable to health in mind and body. The aim was to inaugurate a method of living which, while permitting a reasonable enjoyment of the benefits of a true, refined civilisation, would not involve the laying on of undue burden by privileged persons upon an unlettered class. It was a school for stimulating and encouraging young people to think for themselves about the meaning of life and what their attitude to it should be, so that they could advance and mature more than contemporary students following other teaching methods. The building was also designed to have conferences, lectures, music and drama performances, all in conjunction with, and for the furtherance of, the leading ideals.
    The open Cloister Garth would soon become a mecca for music lovers who congregated on Sundays for concerts and choral performances. There too the students slept in hammocks, shielded from hard weather by canvas drapes. As a young parent, my wife and I, with a daughter in her pushchair, would walk to the Cloisters on a Sunday afternoon to sit on the lawns and to listen to the music and wonderful voices.

After the war

There was very little teaching activity during the two world wars, but during the second the Ministry of Defence commandeered it and the Army moved in. Their total disregard for the architectural value of the building not only left it in a shocking state, but left the Grand Organ too damaged for restoration. The Ministry offered £2,575 compensation - about 8% of the original building costs. For a while it was used as a store for manufacturing products. No local organisation wanted it due to the cost of repair and maintenance, and the future of The Cloisters was in grave doubt.
    In March 1948, Miss Lawrence, now 83 and residing in a local nursing home, asked her local solicitor, Tom Bainbridge, to look into the possibility of its being used by the local Freemasons. Tom agreed to ask his many business acquaintances in Masonry to give the matter their attention and in due course they rose to the challenge. Miss Lawrence was overjoyed. A consortium of representatives from many local lodges met and formed a Trust. The Provincial Grand Lodge of Hertfordshire visited and, their blessing given, the prospect became a reality. Whereupon the whole, comprising the leasehold - including two cottages and Ladybarn (Miss Lawrence’s original home) - the compensation sum, plus £100 per annum maintenance until her death, and the residue of her estate (around £15,000) to be paid after her death, was transferred. The dear lady died aged 90 in August 1953, happy in the knowledge that her beloved Cloisters would continue in a similar vein to her original ideals.
    Although the first usage as a masonic centre occurred before her death, it was some two years before The Cloisters was fully adapted for its new purpose. The Cloister Garth was roofed over and became the Temple, which had to be cleared for dining. A very shrewd and active Lawrence Cloisters Trust (in which I served for several years) has updated facilities without spoiling the original concept. We now have a very pleasant lounge bar (formerly the Bainbridge Room), several new Lodge of Instruction rooms, a new central heating system, modernised toilets (including a ladies’ powder room), a 150-seat dining room with a portable stage in sections (which I designed), and a Temple with a modern organ and storage heaters (replacing the original suspended gas heaters). The Temple is admired by all who visit, including parties of schoolchildren.
    The Cloisters has become quite popular for many civilian functions and you need to book some six months in advance to secure a fixture. The parent lodge here is Cecil Lodge No 449 (19.3.1838) which sponsored six main lodges. They in turn have sponsored many daughter lodges, some over the border in Bedfordshire. There are currently 19 lodges, seven Chapters and nine side degrees meeting in this unique building.

W Bro JR Gifford PPGReg. would like to thank the Provincial Grand Secretary of Hertfordshire for permission to reproduce photographs taken from the book Happy Hertfordshire 1797-1997. Readers with an interest in the detailed history of The Cloisters will be rewarded by reading The Cloisters, Letchworth 1907-1967 by VW Miles MA, PPGD, Herts.