Wandsworth Quaker Meeting House including frontage building and boundary walls

Wandsworth Quaker Meeting House

This is a Quaker meeting house complex comprising a frontage building facing Wandsworth High Street, the main meeting house itself, and associated structures, set around a walled burial ground. The site contains buildings of overlapping periods from the late 17th century onwards.

The earliest element is a house of probably late 17th or early 18th-century date that fronts onto the street. Behind it lies the principal meeting house, built in 1778. A women's business meeting room was added to the complex probably either in 1798 or around 1811. The frontage building was widened and re-faced in 1927 with subsequent alterations by architect Hubert Lidbetter in 1957, and again in 2019.

The frontage building is constructed of brick with red brick re-facing in Flemish bond applied in 1927 and yellow stock brick to the side and rear. The meeting house itself is of brown brick laid in Flemish bond. Both the main and women's meeting rooms are covered with clay tile hipped roofs. The main meeting room has a double-hipped roof structure, the women's room a single-hipped roof, both incorporating king-post trusses.

The frontage building is two storeys tall and rectangular in plan, facing north. Its western three bays represent the original building, whilst the two eastern bays were added in 1927, slightly recessed. Originally the north elevation consisted of three bays with a centrally placed entrance beneath a rendered surface and hipped roof, flanked by a monumental gateway and boundary wall to the east. The 1927 re-fronting introduced a flat roof behind parapets with concrete copings. The current fenestration consists of regular six-over-six horned timber sashes in square-headed openings with creased tile voussoirs and concrete sills. The former entrance doorway has been replaced by a window. The two ground-floor bays of the eastern extension feature arched openings; one is blind and contains a timber notice board, whilst the other serves as the main entrance with timber gates incorporating cast-iron security bars. The eastern return is of yellow stock brick and is blank, extending to a rendered section of the boundary wall above which rises the eastern wall of a covered passageway.

The meeting house stands to the rear. Its only externally visible elevation faces south across the burial ground and consists of three window bays. The windows are tall openings with segmental lintels, timber sills and six-over-six horned sashes. The parapet to the double-hipped roof is rebuilt with stone copings. A stone inscription below the windows reads 'REBUILT / 1778'. An entrance to the covered passageway lies to the east, marked by a stone hood supported on timber brackets with a pair of timber doors featuring margin glazing.

Internally, the main meeting room is accessed from the covered passage via a recessed opening with panelled timber returns and three-panel timber doors. The covered passage retains many original flagstones and a single timber column with a cast-iron Tuscan capital and base—a remnant of four columns that once supported the passage roof from 1798. The walls of the passageway, including the east wall of the meeting house, are faced with ashlar at the southern end.

The meeting house interior is a large square space lit by windows on the south side. It preserves an original boarded floor and plastered and painted walls and ceiling. The ceiling features four circular cast-iron ventilators. The room has square-sunk softwood dado panelling. This steps up at the elders' stand on the west side, which retains its original doors and fixed seating. The stepped stands for the remaining perimeter seating survive, although the fixed seats themselves were removed in 1957. The north wall contains four-panel doors with a panelled recess between them providing entrance to the women's business meeting room. This smaller room has square-sunk dado panelling and a timber floor, lit at high level from the north and east. The east-side window openings are original though truncated arched openings with timber windows with glazing bars. The north wall of the women's room houses a large rectangular serving hatch to a kitchen and a four-panel door with timber surround giving access to the roofed-over corridor behind the frontage building. The original king-post roof trusses survive above both meeting rooms.

The ground floor of the frontage building comprises a single room, originally two rooms opened out in 2019, with panelled dados and a surviving 18th-century cupboard on the south side of the chimney breast in the west wall; other cupboards are modern copies of this historic example. The floors are modern woodblock. The first floor contains a caretaker's flat which is understood to have been modernised.

To the south of the meeting house lies a walled burial ground containing numerous grave markers. The boundary walls are of yellow stock brick laid in Flemish bond. The western wall is abutted by the higher wall of the adjoining property. A memorial stone set into the eastern boundary wall records Joan Stringer, who died in 1697 and gave the ground to the meeting. The inscription reads 'HERE LYETH Y / BODY OF / JOAN STRINGER / THE GIVER OF / THE GROUND / WHO DYED IN / THE YEAR / 1697'.

The 1957 alterations by Lidbetter involved roofing over the former yard of the frontage building to create a number of rooms including a kitchen, and adding ancillary accommodation in a flat-roofed block attached to the east.