In 1663-4, the Quakers purchased premises on the north side of St Martin's Lane (now Quakers Alley) to convert into the Great Meeting House. The Great Meeting House was repaired, altered and partly rebuilt over the next two centuries until it burned down in 1871.<1>

Between 1800 and 1802 the meeting house in Quaker Alley was remodelled and extended at a cost of c.£900, part of which was raised by selling St. Helen's chapel with its associated five almshouses and a further four almshouses adjoining it on the south, and the disused burial grounds in Moor Lane and Almshouse Lane. From 1826 to 1835 the Colchester monthly meeting had to be subsidized by the other Essex meetings. In 1851 the meeting house could hold 767, but the congregations on Census Sunday were only 58 in the morning and 48 in the afternoon.

(Following the fire in 1871, a new meeting house on a more convenient site in Sir Isaac's Walk opened in 1872 and was remodelled in 1892. The meeting house in Sir Isaac's Walk, which had proved expensive to maintain, was sold in 1938 and a new one built in Shewell Road. That site was compulsorily purchased for redevelopment in 1974 and the Friends acquired St. Mary's House (built for John Constable's layer in 1803), Church Street, from the Post Office in a derelict state.)

The location of the Great Meeting House is approximate (?now Colchester Townhouse), based on Monson's Map of 1848 (No. 21)<2>.