Cirencester Quaker Meeting House and attached Warden's House

Cirencester Quaker Meeting House and Warden's House

This is a Quaker Meeting House built in 1673, with an attached warden's house added in 1810. The building underwent further alterations and additions in 1726, 1810 and 1865.

The meeting house is constructed of coursed squared Cotswold limestone rubble, while the porch and warden's house are of coursed squared limestone. The meeting house roof is covered in Cotswold stone slates; the porch has a flat roof covered in felt behind a parapet.

The building has a rectangular plan with a porch on the north side fronting Thomas Street and an L-shaped warden's house attached to the east. The meeting house itself contains two meeting rooms set back from Thomas Street, arranged parallel to each other. The earlier eastern room is larger and includes a central through-passage, while the later western room dates to 1810. A side passage of 1810 runs alongside this western room. An upper floor or loft occupies the roof space.

The original 1673 Thomas Street elevation featured a central doorway with a depressed four-centred arch and mullioned windows on either side. These are now blocked or obscured, though the three-light window with thick ovolo mullions is internally visible from the kitchen of no. 51, and the other window is evidenced only by a straight joint in the stonework.

The 1865 entrance porch fronts Thomas Street in four bays with arched openings. The entrance, left of centre, has a pair of four-panel doors with a simple fanlight of radiating spokes. The other three bays contain sash windows each with a single central vertical glazing bar, set in chamfered reveals with flat stone surrounds. The windows and door are linked by an unmoulded impost band. A raised central section of the parapet is supported by scrolls and bears the incised lettering "FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE".

To the west of the entrance porch, set back, is a pair of part-glazed six-panel doors leading to a side passage under the loft of the 1810 room.

The rear elevation facing the former burial ground (now garden) to the south has five round-headed sash windows of 1810 with intersecting Gothic glazing bars and two rear doors. Doorway lintels are dated 1673 (to the central passage) and 1810 (to the side passage). The south elevation features a projecting chimney stack but is otherwise plain. A small square chimney stack has been removed and the ridge capped at this point.

Internally, the meeting house entrance leads to a central stone-flagged passage flanked by screens of four tiers of deal shutters between pilasters, installed during the 1810 remodelling. The vertically-sliding shutters can be raised above ceiling height to form a single interior space.

The main meeting room to the east has a stone-flagged floor at the centre and four timber Tuscan Doric columns, probably of 1810, supporting stop-chamfered ceiling beams and the room above. The plaster ceiling is coved. The 1810 fitting out includes a raised timber-boarded stand on the east side with panelled dado and front, with stepped approaches at either end featuring columnar newels, stick balusters with delicate reeding, and a moulded handrail. The other two walls have boarded stands with fixed seating and high dado panelling.

The 1810 room to the west of the passage is similarly panelled. The front to the loft on the far side remains, although the gallery itself was closed off in 1989.

Above the main meeting room is an upper floor room approached via a staircase in the warden's house. This room is of 18th-century character and may relate to works carried out in 1726. It was originally divided into three wide bays by panelled segmental arched partitions with central keystones, and has a fine Coalbrookdale-type fireplace with cast-iron hob at the far end. The room formerly continued over the through-passage but is now closed off by an early 19th-century partition, with one segmental arched bay beyond. From here the original roof structure is visible, showing substantial rafters and purlins to the original structure and less substantial scantling to the 1810 build.

The warden's house at no. 51 is physically attached to the meeting house, linked internally at ground floor and attic level. It is two storeys fronting onto Thomas Street. The ground floor has one eight-over-eight pane sash window in a plain reveal, and the first floor has one similar window. The entrance door is six-panelled with the top two panels glazed, set beneath a fanlight in a round-headed plain reveal. A plat band runs over the ground floor and an unmoulded string over the first floor. The parapet is coped with one limestone chimney stack; a later red brick stack sits on the hipped roof. The west-facing side elevation has a three-over-three first-floor window with a stone cill.

A blocked three-light ovolo-moulded stone-mullion window of the 1673 meeting house is visible on the ground floor kitchen.