Rook How Friends' Meeting House And Cottage

Rook How Friends' Meeting House and Cottage is a meeting house and house built in 1725, as noted on the door latch and spice cupboard door. The building is constructed of roughcast stone and features a slate roof. It is two storeys high and has five bays, with the third bay projecting as a two-storey gabled porch, while the first two bays are single storey. Most windows have wooden mullions that are chamfered to the inside, with two lights in the windows flanking the entrance and in the fifth bay, and three lights in the first floor of the third bay and the fourth bay. Most windows, except for those in the fourth and fifth bays on the ground floor, have leaded glazing with rectangular quarries. The first two bays feature 40-pane sash windows. The entrance has a segmental head with a ledged and battened door that has strap hinges, accessed by five three-sided steps. There is a gable-end stack with a rounded shaft and a later lean-to porch on the right return.

The rear of the building has casement windows in the two bays on the left side, along with a central cross-mullion stair window that includes intermediate bars and leaded glazing with diamond quarries. Inside the porch, there is a stair leading to a former gallery and entrances to both the meeting house and the house; the entrance to the meeting house features decorative ironwork on the latch, which also displays the date. The meeting house contains a bench at the dais and wall supports for other benches, which have been removed. The gallery, supported by two round timber posts, has a balustrade and timber partitioning that dates from the early 20th century when the gallery was converted into a bedroom. The house features plank and muntin partitions with moulding on the muntins on both the ground and first floors, along with two-panel doors and a dog-leg stair. The spice cupboard door also has a date and H hinges, and there are hat pegs in the ground-floor room. This is a well-preserved meeting house with an attached house, both of which are in good condition.