Brougham Terrace consisted of twelve houses believed to have been constructed around 1830 was named after the Whig politician and lawyer Henry Brougham, who was created Baron of Brougham and Vaux in 1830. By the late C19 the four houses to the centre of the terrace had become the West Derby Union Offices, and by 1908 had expanded to take in the remaining properties at the south-western end of the terrace with a new building constructed in their place that survives today. In 1889 William Henry Quilliam, a Liverpool solicitor and Muslim convert, bought No.8 for the Liverpool Muslim Institute (the Institute had been established by Quilliam at the Temperance Hall on Mount Vernon Street, Liverpool in 1887), constructing an extension at the rear that was the first fully-functioning mosque in England. He later bought the rest of the houses at the north-eastern end of the terrace and opened a boarding school for boys and a day school for girls, with an orphanage known as Medina House at number 12 Brougham Terrace. Quilliam also established the first Islamic publication house in the United Kingdom in the basement of No.8, publishing 'The Crescent' plus a monthly journal known as 'The Islamic World' that was circulated worldwide, and collections of his lectures, including 'The Faith of Islam', in 1889. The mosque was used to hold Islamic funerals and several Muslim burials at the Necropolis on the opposite side of West Derby Road. At its peak, the Liverpool Muslim Institute had a membership of approximately 200 people.
William Henry Quilliam was born at 22 Eliot Street, Liverpool, on the 10th of April 1856, the son of a watchmaker and part of a wealthy Wesleyan Methodist family who brought him up mainly
on the Isle of Man. Most of his working life though was spent in Liverpool after he was educated at the Liverpool Institute, and in 1878 he began working as a solicitor at 28 Church St, Liverpool where he was a criminal lawyer who defended many high-profile murder cases. Illness led him to travel to France and Morocco in
the early and mid-1880s for recuperation. It was in Morocco that
Quilliam is said to have become interested in Islam, and he publicly
announced his conversion from Christianity when he returned to Liverpool
in 1887, changing his first name to Abdullah. He claimed that he was the first native Englishman to embrace Islam and his conversion led to a remarkable story of the growth of Islam in Victorian Britain. Upon returning to
Liverpool he established the Liverpool Muslim Institute at the
Temperance Hall on Mount Vernon Street before acquiring No.8
Brougham Terrace two years later and constructing the purpose-built mosque
extension. This was achieved due to a donation by Prince Nasrullah Khan of Afghanistan. He also opened the boarding schools and the orphanage, Medina House, for non-Muslim parents who
were unable to look after their children and agreed for them to be
brought up as Muslims. In 1893 he was given the title 'Alim' by the Sultan of
Morocco and in July 1894 the Caliph of Islam and Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire, Abdul Hamid II bestowed him with the title of
Sheikh-al-Islam for the British Isles. Quilliam left Liverpool in 1908
rather abruptly and it has been suggested that he was struck off as a
solicitor for falsifying evidence in a divorce case. By the time he left
it is estimated that up to 600 people had converted to Islam as a
result of his work and preaching, including Professors Nasrullah Warren
and Haschem Wilde, Resched P Stanley, former Mayor of Stalybridge, and
Rev H H Johnson, a former Anglican clergyman.
After he left
Liverpool in 1908 the houses of Brougham Terrace were sold to Liverpool
Corporation by Quilliam's son and numbers 8-10 became a Registry Office. Without Quilliam's influence and funding, the Muslim community in Liverpool dispersed.
The two houses at the north-eastern end of the terrace (No's
11 & 12) were demolished at some point between 1908 and 1927 and
replaced by a cinema (then a music store), leaving numbers 8, 9 & 10
as the sole survivors of the original terrace. When No. 8 became part
of the Registry Office the mosque was converted for use as a strong
room and its original features (apart from the roof structure) removed.
The registry office at 8-10 Brougham Terrace remained in use until
1999/2000, after which time the buildings remained disused and subject
to vandalism.
The Abdullah Quilliam Society was formed in 1999 and acquired numbers 8-10 in 2005/2006 with the intention of re-opening the buildings as an active mosque and a community and heritage centre. The mosque at the rear of No.8, which reopened in 2014, has been restored and is an active place of worship. A number of rooms on the ground floor of No.8 have also been restored and a temporary classroom block has been erected in the rear yard to enable educational visits, classes and community group use. The second floor and attic levels of all three buildings have been converted for student accommodation. The mosque is now an integral and astounding piece of islamic history in Britain.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/05/historical-liverpool-dwellings-annfield.html
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