Horsham Quaker Meeting House

Quaker Meeting House and attached cottage built in 1786, with a small rear extension built in 1939.

MATERIALS: red brick laid in Flemish bond. The base of all external walls as well as the rear and side elevations have burnt headers and bricks laid in English bond. The hipped roof with a central flat roof has handmade tiles. The rear extension has a similar hipped roof with handmade tiles.

PLAN: oblong meeting house and north-western extension with the attached cottage to the north-east being narrower and shorter.

EXTERIOR: the meeting house and north-western extension are one-storey and the main elevation faces south-east with a porch on its south-east elevation. Below the eaves is a cornice of three courses of moulded brick. The main entrance is in a gabled porch with a rubbed and gauged brick arch with two-leaf six-panelled entrance doors leading straight into the meeting room. On either side are tall arched windows with metal glazing bars under similar brick arches. The south-west elevation has a single sash window (eight-over-eight panes) under a fanlight of similar glazing bar patterns. Just beside it is an external square brick stack. Above the roof of the north-west rear extension are two blocked windows under segmental brick arches. The extension has a door and a window at each end, with a rear elevation of a four-light small-paned central window flanked by two small windows.

The attached cottage is two storeys and it has a separate hipped and tiled roof. There is one chimneystack near the east corner. Its front elevation has two eight-over-eight sashes and a four-panelled front door under a later canopy. Its rear elevation appears to have been altered. Two windows and a door on the ground floor have concrete lintels, while the two metal windows on the upper floor have brick lintels of soldier courses.

INTERIOR: the meeting room is square with a suspended timber floor and a suspended ceiling (with new acoustic panels). The walls have dado panelling which curves up behind the former elders’ and ministers’ stand on the wall opposite of the entrance. There is a dais around three sides of the room with fixed benches. In the corners are four Tobin’s Tubes, short metal ventilation flues which draw in fresh air via grilles in the external walls (and the former external walls now inside the extension). The meeting room is lit by three windows and new pendant lights. The extension contains a kitchen, a small meeting room and toilets.