Uxbridge Quaker Meeting House

Quaker Meeting House built in 1817, with an extension to the south built in 1962 from designs by Hubert Lidbetter.

MATERIALS: stock brick laid in Flemish bond with a slate roof.

PLAN: rectangular plan with porch on the west.

EXTERIOR: the meeting house comprises two double-height meeting rooms on either side of a central lobby, which is entered via a doorway on the main north front. There is a gabled porch to the smaller (originally women’s) room on the west side. Attached on the south side is a lower extension of 1962, by Hubert Lidbetter.

The original building has a shallow hipped roof and three high round-headed windows with gauged brick arches and glazing bar sashes on the north elevation, two lighting the main meeting room and one the smaller room. A similarly-detailed half window is placed over the main north entrance, which has double doors each of three flush-beaded panels under a flat gauged brick arch.

At the west end the porch has a hipped roof and double doors under a gauged brick arch, these doors each of five flush-beaded panels. The porch is flanked by windows similar to those on north side. The east elevation facing the street is plain and windowless. On the south side, the addition of 1962 has a shallow pitched roof.

INTERIOR: the main entrance on the north front gives onto a lobby which originally had shutters on both sides which could be opened up to create a single internal space. The shutters to the smaller meeting room were destroyed in a fire in 1988 and not reinstated, and that room now has a modern character and finishes. However, the main meeting room survives intact, with its shutters on the west side operated by sash cords, allowing them to be raised into the roof space. It also retains its perimeter panelled dado (partly renewed in 1988) with fixed seating and, on the east side, the elders’ stand, raised by three steps and with a panelled front. The stand is reached by two short flights of stairs, each with turned newels of late C18 or early C19 character. The walls above the dado are plastered and painted, and there is a flat lath and plaster ceiling. In the roof space, the original king-post roof structure of sawn softwood survives. To the south, the 1962 extension contains a kitchen, schoolroom and WCs.