Friends Meeting House

Friends' Meeting House

This building on York Street dates from 1817–19 and was designed by William Wilkins (1778–1839), the renowned architect responsible for the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. It was originally constructed as a Masonic Hall in the Greek Revival style, though it has served the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) since 1866.

The building is constructed with a limestone ashlar front, while the sides and rear are built of coursed limestone rubble. The roof is largely concealed, except for two prominent cylindrical lanterns that top-light the interior.

The plan is roughly rectangular, comprising a central principal chamber flanked by secondary rooms to the east and a staircase to the west, with a projecting portico to the north. The basement contains detached vaults running northwards beneath the road. The building presents as a single storey with basement.

The exterior is dominated by the central block of three bays, flanked by lower rusticated bays containing six-panel, raised and fielded entrance doors. The principal feature is a projecting, pedimented Ionic portico with two columns in antis, fronting a blind central doorway with pylon architrave and full entablature above. The first and third bays of the central block contain pylon windows with shouldered architrave and cornice, each housing six-over-six sash windows. The side elevations retain cast iron rainwater heads decorated with Masonic devices. The west elevation features a pair of three-over-three sash windows under a timber lintel, with a similar window lighting the staircase below. The rear elevation has two sash windows at ground floor level and three at basement level, set in dressed stone surrounds.

The interior retains significant 19th-century decorative schemes. A lobby with staircase to the west opens into the Great Room, which features a foliate frieze with egg-and-dart moulding, a coved ceiling, six-panelled doors in reeded doorcases, and fireplaces with marble slips and timber surrounds. The cast iron fireplaces feature decoration matching that on the doors. The room was originally lit only by the two high circular lanterns above, which retain fine plaster ceiling details. To the east, the former committee room contains a plain fireplace. The lobby to the west preserves its egg-and-dart moulding. A dog-leg stair of stone with square-section stick balusters and ramped mahogany-veneer handrail descends to the basement, which features an original WC at the bottom of the first flight. A second meeting room occupies most of the basement space and has a later moulded Gothic plaster frieze at picture rail height and an inserted Gothic window with a four-centred arched top to the rear. Rooms originally used for Masonic functions are ranged to the north, while to the east a two-bedroomed flat has been created from space formerly occupied by a second staircase, kitchen, and wine cellar. A shallow forecourt leads to seven stone-lined, round-arched vaults running beneath the road to the north.

The building opened as a Masonic Hall on 23 September 1819. The Freemasons found the building expensive to maintain and, despite attempts at fundraising through a tontine and the rental of the Great Room for entertainments, left in the 1820s. The building subsequently served as an Assembly Room and exhibition space, and by the 1830s became a Non-conformist chapel. In 1842 it was leased by Reverend J. Wallinger and reopened as Bethesda Chapel, an event commemorated by the date '1842' inscribed on the pediment above the portico. The Religious Society of Friends acquired the building in 1866 and continues to use it. Alterations in the 1980s converted part of the basement to a flat and adapted spaces for community use.