About Quilliam College
Our Mission
Our mission is to become a school of harmony and excellence, balancing traditional British and Islamic values through strategic co-curricular partnerships that cultivate leadership, scholarship, craftsmanship and citizenship in the next and future generations.
Who We Are
Quilliam College is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (company number 17383137). It is not part of the Abdullah Quilliam Society and is not operated by, or involved in the operation of, any mosque.
Our Endowment
We intend to establish the Quilliam Endowment Foundation, a charity to hold land and buildings for education in Merseyside.
Abdullah Quilliam’s mosque and school
Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932), a Liverpool solicitor, became a Muslim in 1887 and founded the Liverpool Muslim Institute, first meeting at the Temperance Hall on Mount Vernon Street. On Christmas Day 1889, the Institute opened at 8 Brougham Terrace, West Derby Road, which Historic England recognises as the earliest recorded mosque in Britain. With donations from across the Muslim world, the Institute bought the neighbouring houses and set up a printing press, lecture hall, orphanage and school. By 1892 the Institute was running a school, later a boarding school for boys and a day school for girls. After Quilliam left Liverpool in 1908, the building was used as council offices. It has since been restored by the Abdullah Quilliam Society and reopened as a mosque.
Sources: Historic England, “Where was Britain’s first recorded mosque?”; National Heritage List for England, entry 1062583. Ron Geaves, Islam in Victorian Britain: The Life and Times of Abdullah Quilliam (Kube, 2010). Jamie Gilham and Ron Geaves (eds), Victorian Muslim: Abdullah Quilliam and Islam in the West (Hurst, 2017)
