Manchester Quaker Meeting House, boundary walls and steps

Manchester Quaker Meeting House, Boundary Walls and Steps

The Quaker Meeting House was built in 1828 to a design by Richard Lane. It was altered in the 1860s by Alfred Waterhouse and underwent further alterations in 1923 and 1962.

The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with a sandstone ashlar façade. The other elevations are of brick with stone dressings, beneath a slate roof. It is rectangular in plan and arranged over two storeys with a basement, aligned with its entrance facing east to the street and set within a walled precinct.

The building is designed in Greek Revival style. The main east elevation has five bays with giant end pilasters and a portico of attached giant Greek Ionic columns. A frieze engraved with the words "Friends' Meeting House" is surmounted by a pediment. Windows are generally twelve-pane sash windows. The central doorway features modern glazed double doors and a twentieth-century overlight flanked by side windows.

The north elevation extends ten bays with similar windows, though some are later steel windows and some are blocked. There are notional brick pilasters, a parapet and a stone sill band. An entrance to the basement was inserted in the 1960s. The south elevation is similar, with a small single-storey extension probably dating from the late nineteenth century and inserted basement entrances. The rear elevation is brick with giant end pilasters; the central three bays project slightly and the parapet is raised to emphasise and create movement across the façade. All windows except those in the end bays of the upper storey are blind or blocked.

The interior contains a wide entrance hall with doors leading to rooms on each side, the result of remodelling undertaken at various dates in the twentieth century. Hardwood doors lead to the main meeting room, which features remodelling carried out in the 1960s by Halliday and Agate. The walls are lined with acoustic panelling and the ceiling is divided into a pattern of square translucent panels beneath roof lights. Stairs rise on each side to galleries with raked seating. A stage has a lower sliding section to increase its depth, and the stage recess is backed with an angled screen of veneered panels. Finishes are generally in hardwoods popular at the time, including a woodblock floor.

Upper-floor rooms broadly resemble those of the foyer below, largely with modern finishes. The basement area has undergone successive alterations and subdivisions whilst retaining the original arched spine wall and some of the original vaulted ceilings. In the roof space, the original roof construction of Baltic pine largely survives. Pulleys and chains attached to the timbers are the remains of a system which allowed the original early-nineteenth-century smaller and larger meeting rooms to be divided by means of a moveable partition that could be raised vertically.

The frontage to Mount Street was remodelled in 2000 with a new ramped access and reinstatement of stone gate piers. The entrance is accessed by flights of three and four stone steps. The front boundary wall, approximately one metre in height, is of sandstone ashlar surmounted by replacement steel railings to Mount Street. These walls return along the sides of the forecourt with stone piers topped with stone copings. From this point, the walls continue around the site in brick laid in Flemish bond with stone copings. On the south side, the wall incorporates a stone panel dated 1828. Towards the rear of the site, the wall has been altered to form a car park entrance. The inner sides of the precinct brick walls incorporate small headstones with Roman numerals identifying burial plots. The walls and piers date from the construction of the original building.