Portishead Quaker Meeting House

Portishead Quaker Meeting House

This Quaker Meeting House began as a 17th-century house and was converted for religious use around 1670. It has been substantially altered and extended in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The building is constructed of local rubble stone with a lime-washed west elevation and a thatched roof. The brick chimney stack has been rendered. The roofs of the mid-19th-century additions are covered in slate tiles.

The meeting house is rectangular in plan and single-storey. The original entrance on the west elevation has been relocated to the north, where a single-storey mid-19th-century addition serves as an entrance lobby and kitchen. A single-storey lean-to toilet block, built in the mid-19th century and altered in the late 20th century, extends from the left end of the west elevation.

The main building has a steeply pitched roof with raised gables finished with interlocking coping stones. The former entrance door at the centre of the west elevation has been partially blocked and replaced with a 20th-century three-light timber mullion window with leaded lights beneath a 19th-century brick segmental head. To its right is a 19th-century three-light window with a central iron casement and leaded lights, also beneath a brick segmental head. The left side of the west elevation is obscured by the mid-19th-century addition, which has a 20th-century panelled door on its south side.

The north gable end carries a chimney stack and a rectangular opening covered with netting. A single-storey wall extends westward from this point with a coped parapet and a blocked window with stone hoodmould. The single-storey north addition has gabled parapet walls. Its western end features a pair of three-panel entrance doors in a shallow projection with a stone cornice. The north and east elevations of this addition have 19th-century windows—a two-light and three-light respectively—both timber-framed with metal casements and leaded lights beneath stone hoodmoulds. A small square timber window sits on the south wall.

The east elevation of the 17th-century building contains an 18th-century three-light timber mullion window with chamfered mullions, leaded lights and an iron casement, set beneath a stone lintel.

The interior begins with the mid-19th-century lobby at the north end, beyond which lies the kitchen. Windows throughout have splayed reveals. The internal wall between lobby and kitchen was reconfigured in the late 20th century with an inserted internal window with leaded lights. A 19th-century fireplace occupies the south wall, beside which is a cupboard with a six-panel door featuring raised and fielded panels. The cupboard door, the entrance door to the lobby, and the door to the meeting room all have bolection moulded architraves.

The meeting room is accessed through a wide six-panel early 19th-century door retaining its original furniture; the top two panels have been replaced with glazing. A blocked fireplace is set into the north wall. The floor is laid with timber boards and walls and ceiling are plastered with a dado rail running around the perimeter.

At the south end stands a dais with raised and fielded panelling to dado height that rises behind the raised elders' bench. Fixed pine benches with shaped supporting brackets stand to either side. Towards the north side of the dais is a central panelled screen shielding the elders' bench, with a bench seat in front, and low panelled screen sections separate the dais from the meeting room proper.

The roof structure features a diagonally-set ridge piece supported by three intermediate elm trusses with principal rafters, staggered butt-purlins, and collars. Some timbers have been renewed and the ceiling joists appear to be of 20th-century date.