Friends Meeting House, 5 Halfpenny Gate Road, Broomhedge, Moira

Friends Meeting House

A two-storey Quaker meeting house built in 1874, located on the south side of Halfpenny Gate Road, approximately 2.3 kilometres north-east of Moira. The building is now undergoing conversion to a dwelling house, having closed as a meeting house in 2000.

The meeting house was built primarily through the efforts of William Davidson, then Headmaster of the neighbouring Brookfield Agricultural School (founded by the Society of Friends in 1836), and the mill-owner John Grubb Richardson, whose family were benefactors of the school. The Richardsons provided the land and contributed substantially to the building's cost. When Quaker involvement in the school ended in 1922, the meeting continued with reduced attendance. The building was repaired in 1986, but declining membership and maintenance costs led to the meeting being formally laid down in 2000.

The building is designed with simplified classical detailing characteristic of Quaker architecture. It is basically rectangular in plan with an off-centre gabled porch projection to the north set within a shallow full-height gabled bay, and shallow full-height projections to the north-east and north-west. A small single-storey rear projection was recently removed.

The front elevation faces north and is largely symmetrical except for the porch projection on the left side. Window openings are arranged in single, paired, and tripartite groupings. Most have moulded surrounds with bead-chamfer stopped reveals resting on common sills that encircle the building as stringcourses. Additional broad moulded stringcourses encircle the building, intersecting at the levels of window arch imposts. Directly below each opening is a small cast-iron ventilation grill. Frames are painted timber fixed lights with margin panes, though a number are missing.

Walls are constructed in rubble fieldstone. Below the ground floor stringcourse these are exposed; above they are finished with roughcast render, part of which has been removed. Walls rest on a battered plinth, with a replacement chamfered red clay brick articulating the junction between plinth and upper walling. Red clay brick also forms the corners and openings, now revealed where render is missing. The pitched roof is covered with natural slate and has a moulded eaves course; rainwater goods are uPVC. A new brick chimneystack rises to the centre of the ridge.

The gabled sentry-box style porch projection on the left of the north front is single-storey. The front door opening has a semi-circular arch with moulded render surround; the painted timber panelled door features semi-circular headed upper panels. Each side of the porch contains a narrow flat-headed slit window. To the right of the porch is a paired window opening, and to the centre of the first floor is a tripartite arrangement.

The east façade has a gabled two-storey stair projection with centrally positioned window openings (one to ground floor, one to first floor). The left side is single-storey with four evenly spaced window openings. The rear south façade has centrally positioned paired window openings. The west façade mirrors the east façade, with a paired window arrangement to the ground floor of the stair projection.

The exterior remains largely intact. However, the conversion to residential use has substantially altered the interior layout and detailing. The building sits within an overgrown garden, with a newly-built garage to the east and a neighbouring former Quaker agricultural school to the west. The site is currently protected with temporary site railings.