Leiston Quaker Meeting House, Leiston, Suffolk

Summary

A Quaker Meeting House constructed in an Italianate style in 1860 to the designs of William Parkes Ribbans.

Description

A Quaker Meeting House constructed in an Italianate style in 1860 to the designs of William Parkes Ribbans.

MATERIALS: the building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with rusticated yellow brick quoins and a roof of Welsh slate.

PLAN: the Meeting House follows a conventional plan, with a lobby leading into a large main meeting room. To the west, separated by a screen of vertical sliding shutters, is the smaller meeting room or classroom. This smaller room now includes an enclosed staircase rising to an inserted upper floor, and beyond it on the ground floor is the 1988 extension including a kitchen, and meeting room.

EXTERIOR: the principal structure is a rectangular building three bays wide and one bay deep beneath a hipped slate roof. The building is entered from the north which presents the most elaborate elevation: the central bay is defined by yellow brick quoins and is topped by a pediment with a circular louver at the centre. A single-storey yellow brick porch projects outwards from the centre bay with four brick pilasters and a pair of painted wooden double doors at their centre. Each bay has a six-over-nine sash window in a yellow brick surround topped by a segmental lintel with a keystone and weather moulding. The lower six panes of the central window are cut off by the porch.

The east elevation is entirely plain red brick in Flemish bond.

The south elevation contains three undifferentiated bays of six-over-nine sash windows matching those to the north.

To the west the C19 Meeting House joins the 1988 extension, concealing the base of a brick chimney stack between the two. The extension is slightly set back from the principal north elevation and is one bay wide. It projects south of the building by a single bay and the whole structure is in Flemish bonded Fletton red bricks with painted timber windows and doors.

INTERIOR: the main meeting room has plain plastered walls and ceilings and a floor of pine boards. Matchboard dado panelling runs around three sides of the perimeter rising three steps up to the Elders’ stand at the east of the room, which is topped by a plain handrail. The Elders’ bench has a single arm rest at the centre. Original gas lamp fittings to the walls remain in place while electric pendant lights are suspended from the ceiling. The west end of this meeting room has a timber screen in five parts with a pair of partially glazed doors in the northernmost part. The other four contain vertically sliding wooden shutters, each with two reeded panels, allowing the adjoining small meeting room to be brought into communication with the larger room.

The smaller meeting room has gas lamps and dado panelling, some parts of which are fitted with hinged or fixed reading desks. The room is interrupted by an enclosed staircase leading to the inserted floor of a storeroom above.

A king post truss roof of quality deal timber reinforced with iron straps, common rafters and purlins, survives within the roof space.

The 1988 extension contains a small entrance hall, a kitchen and meeting room looking out on to the churchyard. The exposed roof structure of the meeting room is of laminated pine and rises to a square roof light.

History

The Quaker movement emerged out of a period of religious and political turmoil in the mid-C17. Its main protagonist, George Fox, openly rejected traditional religious doctrine, instead promoting the theory that all people could have a direct relationship with God, without dependence on sermonising ministers, nor the necessity of consecrated places of worship. Fox, originally from Leicestershire, claimed the Holy Spirit was within each person, and from 1647 travelled the country as an itinerant preacher. 1652 was pivotal in his campaign; after a vision on Pendle Hill, Lancashire, Fox was moved to visit Firbank Fell, Cumbria, where he delivered a rousing, three-hour speech to an assembly of 1000 people, and recruited numerous converts. The Quakers, formally named the Religious Society of Friends, was thus established.

Fox asserted that no one place was holier than another, and in their early days, the new congregations often met for silent worship at outdoor locations; the use of members' houses, barns, and other secular premises followed. Persecution of Nonconformists proliferated in the period, with Quakers suffering disproportionately. The Quaker Act of 1662, and the Conventicle Act of 1664, forbade their meetings, though they continued in defiance, and a number of meeting houses date from this early period. Broad Campden, Gloucestershire, came into Quaker use in 1663 and is the earliest meeting house in Britain, although it was out of use from 1871 to 1961. The meeting house at Hertford, 1670, is the oldest to be purpose built. The Act of Toleration, passed in 1689, was one of several steps towards freedom of worship outside the established church, and thereafter meeting houses began to make their mark on the landscape.

Quaker meeting houses are generally characterised by simplicity of design, both externally and internally, reflecting the form of worship they were designed to accommodate. The earliest purpose-built meeting houses were built by local craftsmen following regional traditions and were on a domestic scale, frequently resembling vernacular houses; at the same time, a number of older buildings were converted to Quaker use. From the first, most meeting houses shared certain characteristics, containing a well-lit meeting hall with a simple arrangement of seating. In time a raised stand became common behind the bench for the Elders, so that traveling ministers could be better heard. Where possible, a meeting house would provide separate accommodation for the women’s business meetings, and early meeting houses may retain a timber screen, allowing the separation (and combination) of spaces for business and worship. In general, the meeting house will have little or no decoration or enrichment, with joinery frequently left unpainted.

Throughout the C18 and early C19 many new meeting houses were built, or earlier buildings remodelled, with ‘polite’, Classically-informed designs appearing, reflecting architectural trends more widely. However, the buildings were generally of modest size and with minimal ornament, although examples in urban settings tended to be more architecturally ambitious. After 1800, it became more common for meeting houses to be designed by an architect or surveyor. The Victorian and Edwardian periods saw greater stylistic eclecticism, though the Gothic Revival associated with the Established Church was not embraced.

In 1670 a Quaker burial ground was established in Leiston, off the Aldeburgh Road, and continued in use serving a wide area until 1786. The town’s first purpose-built Meeting House was constructed, on the same site as the existing building close to the Saxmundham crossroads, in 1713. That building, thatched and built of local materials, alongside an assemblage of cottages, was vernacular in character and could accommodate around sixty to seventy members. By 1853 the population of Leiston was expanding alongside new industry, and Nonconformist places of worship were also proliferating. With the Meeting House deemed to be in a state of disrepair the decision was taken to rebuild on the same site, largely instigated by Gundry Neave, the Quaker owner of a nearby factory. The site was cleared, except for two cottages, and the new meeting house was constructed to the designs of William Parkes Ribbans in 1860.

The new building was designed in an Italianate style and is unusually grand for a Quaker Meeting House. Consisting of one large and one small meeting room, separated by a screen of vertically sliding partitions, it originally seated around 170 members and cost £555. By the end of the C19 the smaller meeting room was also being used for adult education classes. In 1931 the adjacent cottages were demolished to accommodate road widening and the site took on its current configuration, the only significant change occurring in 1988 when a small western extension was demolished. Constructed in its place was a new extension providing a kitchen, WCs, a small office and further Meeting Room, to the designs of Philip Woods of Cecil Bourne & Woods, costing around £80,000. The principal meeting room has been little altered but the second Victorian meeting room has had a flight of steps and an additional floor inserted.

To the south of the building the burial ground retains plain headstones to a shared design. Burial records date to 1838 but it is possible that interments began once the Aldeburgh Road burial ground closed in 1786.

William Parkes Ribbans (born around 1810 – 1871) had an architectural practice in Ipswich and is credited with the design of the original 1835-6 phase of the East Suffolk Hospital in Ipswich (Grade II, List entry 1206298) and the 1851 Town Hall at Hadleigh (Grade II, List entry 180682) which bears stylistic similarities with the Leiston Meeting House.

Reasons for Listing

The Quaker Meeting House at Leiston, Suffolk, constructed 1860 to the designs of William Parkes Ribbans is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* as an illustration of the prominent role played by the Religious Society of Friends in the development of Leiston;

* as the work of William Parkes Ribbans, a local architect also responsible for other notable civic buildings in Suffolk.

Architectural interest:

* as an unusually grand example of a C19 Quaker Meeting House in an Italianate style;

* for its well-preserved main meeting room interior.

External Links

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