The Cloisters (Letchworth)

The Cloisters in Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire in the UK was built in 1905 as an open-air school dedicated to Psychology and where students were taught skills from the Arts and Crafts movement. After a period of neglect during World War II The Cloisters became the North Hertfordshire Masonic Centre in 1951.

The Cloisters was built by Quaker Miss Annie Jane Lawrence (16 April 1863–3 August 1953), the daughter of Alfred Lawrence (1826 - 1875), who, with his brother Frederick, owned 'Lawrence Brothers, Smiths and Founders', and his wife Mary Elizabeth (née Ridge, 1838-1903). Her grandfather William Lawrence (1789-1855) came from humble origins but went on to be elected Master of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters in 1848 and an Alderman of the City of London, while her uncle Sir James Lawrence was Lord Mayor of London in 1868. Her younger brother was the Labour politician Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence (1871-1961). In 1881 she was a pupil at the School for Ladies in Hove in Sussex, while in 1895 she visited Boston in the USA. As a young woman she undertook social work in the slums of London, which urged her on to action. Lawrence decided to build a centre dedicated as a school of thought from which adults could go out and effect social change. She chose Letchworth because it was the world's First Garden City; here she leased three acres of land on which she built The Cloisters and Cloisters Lodge, intending that the former should be a School of Philosophy while she lived in the latter.

The design reputedly came to Miss Lawrence in a dream. The building originally consisted of a large half-oval 'open-air room' called the `Cloisters Garth' with an open colonnade to the south and large glazed bays to the north; this was flanked by two wings, one housing the kitchen and store rooms and the other the cubicles and dressing rooms for an oval open-air swimming pool. It was designed according to the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement, and was built using marbles and other materials from all over Europe.

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