The Friends Meeting House

The Friends Meeting House is a chapel built in red brick with stone dressings, topped with a red-tile roof featuring coped gables, designed to reflect modesty and simplicity. The east-facing front has five bays with buttresses and large round-headed windows that include wooden glazing bars. The left-hand bay contains two small sash windows within a blind round-headed opening. In the central bay, there is a porch with a round-headed doorway that features a continuous moulding and double panelled doors. The north gable end is plain, except for a round window adorned with Art Nouveau stained glass and leadwork, also with wooden glazing bars. The building has cast iron rainwater goods.

The rear of the chapel is made of plain brick, with buttresses defining the bays and large round-headed windows similar to those at the front. There is a central panelled rear door beneath a round-headed window. A flat-roofed projection was added to the right of center in 2006.

To the south side is the caretaker’s house, which has a three-window front with 2-pane sash windows under stone lintels and a half-glazed field-panel door beneath a newly added projecting canopy. An integral one-storey projection on the left side features a hipped roof.

Inside, there are two meeting rooms separated by a cross passage, with moveable pine panelled screens on either side. The screens have glazed tops and brass handles, and a steel track in the floor allows the hinged panels to fold open. At the north end of the large meeting room, the ministers’ stand has a panelled pine front with a moulded handrail supported by brass, a folding table on the rear side, a fixed pine bench, and panelling on the back wall. The glass pendant lamps may be original.

Five original pine pews are arranged around the walls, although most of the original pews have been removed. Inside the porch, there is a granite tablet commemorating the building of the meeting house in 1899. The roof is ceiled at collar-beam level, exposing the bracketed trusses. Panel doors lead into the caretaker’s house.