The Cloisters was built by Miss Annie Jane Lawrence as an Open Air
School and Theosophical Meditation Centre. Having moved to
Letchworth in 1905, Miss Lawrence leased a three-acre plot and
wasted no time in setting up her school, alongside building a home
for herself, the Cloisters Lodge.

The building opened on 28th January 1907 – the unique design is
said to have come to Miss Lawrence in a dream and she employed the
architect William Harrison Collishaw to bring it to reality.

It 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 & dressing rooms for an
oval open-air swimming pool. The decorations around the building,
which can still be seen today, were packed with symbolism from the
healthy lifestyle she advocated – doves representing innocence, bats
about to start their dusk patrols, bees building honeycombs to
provide food for the gods, and butterflies dancing with natural joy.

An electric organ was installed in the Cloisters entrance hall, and
through a system of pipes the disembodied sound of organ music
would waft around the building. Boarding students ate communally
(although all housework was considered a male activity) and retired
in the evenings to hammocks that were let down from the ceiling.

During the Second World War, the Cloisters was commandeered by
the army who, unfortunately, did not treat the building kindly. When
it was returned after 6 years, compensation of £2500 was claimed
towards its restoration. However, this was not enough and Miss
Lawrence did not have the money to repair it on her own. Convinced
that it should remain a building for the community, she offered it to
the County Council for free but was turned down and spent the rest
of her life looking for the right organisation to take the building on.

In 1948, after a chance remark, Miss Lawrence was inspired to offer
the Cloisters to the local Masonic fraternity. They accepted and the
first Lodge meeting took place in October 1951, after extensive
renovations had been carried out. By now Miss Lawrence had moved
out of the Lodge and into a nursing home where, now happy that her
grand building was in use again, she died in 1953 at the age of 90.