Faringdon Quaker Meeting House

Quaker Meeting House, built between 1672 and 1673, with later alterations. The building is constructed of limestone rubble stone walls with brick quoins and dressings, and has stone tile roof coverings. It has a rectangular plan with a hipped roof and a small flat-roofed porch to the south-west. The meeting house stands opposite the Grade II listed Duke of Wellington public house, and is situated within the Quaker burial ground, behind a high rubble-stone wall. It is oriented north-east to south-west.

The main south-western front features a flat-roofed entrance porch with a bead-moulded stone surround (which until 2014 contained a double-leaf door). The original three-bay north-western front now has two window openings just below the eaves, each containing an eight-over-eight wooden sash window. A slightly lower window opening, built up in 1687, has a brick surround and flat arch with a keystone; the stone infill for the former doorway is visible below this window.

The rear (north-east) elevation, facing into the burial ground, includes a small window below the eaves. Two timber lintels embedded in this wall suggest the presence of earlier openings, indicating that this elevation may be derived from an earlier building on the site. The south-east elevation has one centrally-placed window with brick dressings and an eight-over-eight sash window. A door opening’s lintel interrupts the window’s brick dressings to one side.

The meeting room, entered from the porch through a 2014 double-leaf six-panel door with glazed square upper lights, is a single space with a flat ceiling supported by two off-centre beams, and includes two hatches. The roof space is reported to contain remnants of a former timber partition. The Quinquennial Inspection Report notes that the roof structure includes substantial oak trusses and triple purlins. A dado runs throughout the meeting room; it is ramped where the Elders’ stand formerly stood, and also ramped either side of the main entrance and the windows. The floor is timber-boarded.