Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 25 - M for Meeting Houses

Come-to-Good in Cornwall with stable at side

Meeting for worship does not require a meeting house but the buildings in which Quakers gather together do reflect something of what Quaker community means and has meant over the centuries.

In Britain Yearly Meeting one of the most striking things about Quaker meeting houses is their variety. Some meetings do not have their own building but gather instead in members' houses or in hired rooms. This may be a decision reached because of lack of numbers, local circumstances or as a witness to simplicity. After all, when Quakerism began this was the way in which local meetings started out.

Manchester Mount Street

The earliest meeting houses, from the 17th and early 18th centuries,

Slough - a modern meeting house

look like houses of the period, even if they were in fact purpose-built. A little later they may take on more of the appearance of a chapel and in the expansiveness of the 19th century sometimes become quite grand. There have been relatively few purpose-built meeting houses in the 20th century but there are some notable exceptions. In modern times Friends have often adapted buildings erected for other purposes - as a house, a shop or even a masonic hall!

Wimbledon - once a house

Barnstaple - once a shop

The new meeting house in Newcastle - once a Masonic hall!

Wallingford 'stand'

Inside these different buildings there will be a meeting room and the way in which this is set out also says something about Quakers both past and present.

Slough meeting room

From the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century a meeting room had a 'stand' at one end where the ministers and, sometimes in lower seats, the elders and overseers sat. They faced the rest of the meeting who were sitting in rows of benches with men on one side and women on the other. In modern times these distinctions melted away and chairs and benches are now usually arranged in a circle with only a table, often containing flowers and perhaps copies of Quaker Faith and Practice and the Bible, as a focus. In modern meeting houses this modern practice is quite natural but in older rooms it can feel as though one is 'camping out' in the middle of somewhere originally arranged quite differently. Certainly in Reading the circular arrangement makes the acoustic quite difficult although I have found that a speaker can be heard quite clearly from the redundant ministers' 'stand'!

Reading meeting room - camping out!

Skipton meeting room

I have just moved from a large 19th century meeting house and a large meeting in Reading to a smaller 17th century meeting house and a small to medium size meeting in Skipton. The architecture of both can be inspiring in different ways but in the end for me the power of meeting for worship comes from a community of people gathering together and that can happen wherever I am.
 
If you want to get a fuller impression of the variety of meeting houses in the British Isles may I recommend John Hall's photostream of Quaker Meeting Houses on Flickr from which all the illustrations for this post are taken.

Quaker Alphabet Blog Week 12 - F for Friends House

Friends House front on Euston Road

Friends House garden

Friends House in Euston Road, London is the very imposing headquarters of Quakers in Britain. With a vast columned entrance facing Euston station and a more modest arched entrance facing a garden at one side it is familiar to generations of Quakers arriving for meetings or to visit the bookshop, cafe or restaurant. It is a busy hub for Friends from all over the country, as it houses the Library and the central offices of Britain Yearly Meeting, but also for a wide variety of other groups.

Liverpool Meeting House by Lidbetter

The building was designed by the Quaker architect Hubert Lidbetter (1885-1966). He was born in Dublin but educated in England and was just starting out in practice after spending the four years of the First World War in the Friends Ambulance Unit when he entered the competition to design a new home for Quakers in London in 1923. The project was finally finished in 1927 and he was awarded a bronze medal for his design by the Royal Institute of British Architects, which led to other commissions including new meeting houses at Birmingham Bull Street in 1933 and Liverpool in 1941.

Over the years the exterior has hardly changed but the interior has been refurbished and decorated in various ways. The simple lines of Lidbetter's original vision still remain and seem to me to combine a Quaker simplicity with a sense of scale. This is particularly the case in the main room, the Large Meeting House, where sessions of Yearly Meeting are held three years out of four. This room is about to undergo a transformation which will radically change its appearance and there are many, including myself, who look forward to the result with some trepidation.

1934 book by Elfrida Vipont

Many Friends who have visited the building regularly over the years as I have feel very much at home there. I have worked in the Library, both behind the desk and in the reading room, have sat on a variety of committees all over the building and have been coming regularly to Yearly Meeting since the 1970s. I therefore have a sense of being part of what goes on at 'the centre' when I am in my local meeting as well as when I am in Friends House.


Friends House has never been a stranger to controversy. Many have questioned the necessity for such a large building on such a valuable plot of land and have asked whether Quakers might be better moving to a different place or sending different parts of the administration to different places. No resolution has been found however and Friends House remains as good a centre for the Society of Friends in Britain as is possible at the moment and Lidbetter's building continues to make its presence felt on the Euston Road.
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