Godalming Quaker Meeting House

Godalming Quaker Meeting House

This Quaker meeting house was built around 1711, with a later wing added to its west side in two phases, around 1772 and 1808. The building is listed Grade II.

The structure is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond. The rear wall base features two areas of Bargate stone with galleting. The brick of the later wing is of poorer quality, with some vitrified bricks included. Both the original building and the wing have handmade clay tile roofs: the meeting room roof is hipped with a central valley gutter, while the wing roof is gabled.

The building is L-shaped in plan. The original meeting house is a one-storey square meeting room dating to about 1711, with its main elevation facing north-east. The later wing, known as the Long Room, extends along the west boundary wall and dates to around 1772 and 1808, containing a lobby, kitchen and smaller meeting room.

The front elevation of the square meeting room has three bays. A central doorway features a double door of eight raised and fielded panels under a bracketed hood. On either side are large wooden cross-windows with leaded lights and one casement each, set under rubbed and gauged flat brick arches. The rear elevation is similar but with stepped brick eaves. Here, a six-panelled door has only a small hood, and the wall base displays two areas of Bargate stone with galleting. The door and window lintels are of brick in rowlock courses. On either side of the central rear door are bricks bearing initials and various dates including 1748 and 1890. At the west corner stands a small lean-to shed beside a door leading to a triangular space with a ladder into the roof void.

The Long Room wing is attached to the north-west corner of the meeting room and extends part-way along its north-west side elevation. The entrance is near this corner, via a six-panel door in a narrow bay. To the north is a long gabled range with a tile-hung south gable. The north gable contains a six-panel door and a two-light leaded window. The wing's east elevation has two three-light leaded windows, the southern one being a 20th-century insertion. The west elevation has no windows and abuts the west boundary yard wall of galleted rubble stone with oversailing domed coping. A brick chimneystack rises approximately halfway along.

The interior meeting room features a panelled dado that sweeps up to three taller panels behind the elders' stand at the east. Fixed benches line the other three walls. The T-shaped ceiling beams with rolled steel joists date from 2001, when a central post was removed; this post was found to have no structural function but was related to the former stove. A four-panelled door leading into the wing retains a wooden bar latch. The meeting room floor is of timber.

Within the Long Room wing, the southern part of the lobby is lit by a skylight and contains few historic features. Its northern half has a fixed bench against the west wall, which continues into the adjoining small meeting room. The small meeting room also has a fixed bench against the east wall and a panelled dado. Its former fireplace to the west is boarded up. The southern partition is of timber, while the northern partition is part-glazed and was moved or replaced further south in the 1970s. A kitchen occupies the northern end of the wing.