Former Quaker Meeting House, Poole Town, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole

Summary

Former Quaker meeting house, now a community centre. Built in 1795-6, probably by Michael Searles; extended and altered in the early C19; mid-C20 alterations; and further alterations and extensions in the late C20.

Description

MATERIALS
It is constructed of brick, which is mostly painted, under a hipped roof covered in corrugated sheeting, previously clad with plain tiles and stone slate verges.

PLAN
The meeting house is orientated roughly north to south, with the original entrance front facing south onto Prosperous Street. It has a rectangular plan of three bays, with late-C20 extension to the east on the site of one of two former burial grounds, and to the south; these two extensions are excluded from the listing. The site of the west burial ground is now (2021) a sports’ court/car park.

EXTERIOR
It is a tall, single-storey building of three bays, with a moulded eaves cornice (covered over in places) and several courses of quoin stones to the south-east and north-east corners. The west side of the building has been strengthened with two brick buttresses (internally there is a tie bar at the north-east corner), and it appears to have undergone some rebuilding since the quoins to the north-west and south-west corners and the impost band which are present on an historic photograph do not survive. This elevation has three round-arched openings with moulded architraves, and each has a late-C20 timber window with reinforced glazing and modern metal security grilles. The window to the left-end bay has been truncated by modern emergency exit doors. A vertical line in the brickwork between the central and southern bays marks the extent of the late-C18 building. The south and east elevations are obscured by late-C20 extensions, but the original window openings in the east elevation, are visible within the building. They have been blocked and a doorway inserted beneath the central window.

INTERIOR
Since the 1970s access to the meeting house is from the late-C20 east extension. It is understood to retain an early-C19 plaster-vaulted ceiling though it is not visible due to a modern suspended ceiling. There are no other historic fittings.

Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the mid-C20 extensions to the east and south are not of special architectural or historic interest.

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, promoting instead 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. 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 built 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, some 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 travelling 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.

By 1655 meetings were being held in a room in Leg Lane (now Lagland Street) in Poole. A purpose-built meeting house was then erected, possibly on the same site, in 1678, and was rebuilt in about 1731. A new meeting house, now Poole Old Town Community Centre, was subsequently constructed in 1795-96 on the corner of Prosperous Street and Lagland Street, designed most proably by the architect and surveyor Michael Searles (1751-1813) who had a practice in London. Searles’ work is sometimes described (RCHME, see Sources) as a substantial rebuilding of the original meeting house, but there is no evidence in the fabric of the present building to confirm this and also, there are references to the ‘old’ meeting house still standing in 1803. In 1820 the present building was extended southwards by a third and a first-floor gallery or room was added. In addition, a south entrance porch that contained twin spiral stairs and a north lean-to addition were also built. A photograph from the late C19 or early C20 shows a simply-furnished interior with a raised stand at one end, wooden bench seating, timber wall panelling, dado rail and timber floorboards.

Meetings ceased in 1938 and the building was sold in 1952-53, though the Friends did not buy their current meeting house, a late-C19 semi-detached house on Wimborne Road, until 1974. Their previous meeting house on Lagland Street was used as a boys’ club from 1946, around which time the roof was recovered with corrugated sheeting and the internal fittings were removed. During the 1960s the burial ground to the west of the meeting house was cleared and the burials moved to one of the town’s municipal cemeteries. A detached Mission Institute of 1906 that had been built on the site of the east burial ground was demolished in 1973 and replaced by the flat-roofed eastern extension to the meeting house. It is probable that the early-C19 entrance porch, which was extant in 1970, was demolished around the same time. The building subsequently became a community centre. Further alterations in the second half of the C20 include the construction of a single-storey lean-to extension against the south wall and the demolition of the north addition. The windows in the west elevation have also been replaced, and other openings either infilled or altered. The interior has also been refurbished and modernised.

Reasons for Listing

Poole Town Community Centre, a late-C18 former Quaker meeting house; extended and refurbished in the 1820s with further alterations and extensions in the mid- and late C20, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as a relatively early example of a purpose-built meeting house by notable architect Michael Searles which expresses restraint and simplicity;
* despite the degree of later intervention and losses, it retains historic character and has a relatively good survival of early fabric;

Historic interest:
* for its very long association with the Quakers of Poole, meetings having taken place in venues in Lagland Street since 1655.

External Links

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