Alton Quaker Meeting House, With Front Boundary Wall And Attached Burial Ground Walls, Alton, Hampshire

Summary

The Alton Quaker Meeting House of 1672, with its contemporary front boundary wall and attached burial ground walls.

Description

Quaker meeting house, 1672.

MATERIALS: the brick building is rendered to the west and north, leaving the brick plinth exposed; on the east elevation, and the west elevation of the south-west wing, the red brick remains visible, laid in English bond. The main roof (extended over the 1832 northern cottage) is hipped, and covered with handmade clay tiles, as is the roof of the hipped south-west wing, which has tile-hanging to the first floor. Apart from the timber sashes to the meeting hall, the windows are metal-framed casements with leaded lights, and with internal secondary glazing.

PLAN: the meeting house building stands on a north/south alignment, with its principal elevation facing west towards Church Street. The original cottage is attached in line to the north, and the 1832 cottage extends northwards beyond that. A wing extends westwards from the south end to meet Church Street; the ground-floor was once open, forming a porch. There are small late-C20/early-C21 extensions to the north-east, east and south-east of the meeting house.

EXTERIOR: the main entrance to the meeting house is through the south-west wing, which originally had an open-fronted porch to the ground floor. A pair of double doors, possibly original, of solid plank and batten construction with false panels to the front, survive to the west wall of the meeting house, within the porch. The front of the porch has now been filled by a brick wall in which is a casement window; to the east are double doors. Above, the tile-hung wall rises to a gable – this is original, though the window arrangement within is new. To the west, the ground-floor brick wall is thought to be original; this is pierced by a single window, with a small window to the first floor, below the eaves.

Within the main range, the meeting hall is expressed by a single large sash window to the west, the exposed sash box set flush with the wall, with six-over-six unhorned frames. Further to the north, the original cottage is entered through a doorway protected by a hood on replacement carved brackets; the door has a single panel below with glazing above. This cottage has a ground-floor window to the north, and two dormer windows; the northern dormer opening has been extended below eaves level, and is fitted with two separate casements. The 1832 cottage has a door opening with a matching hood and a modern door, and a single window to the western elevation. The north elevation has seen much change, with the removal of an external stack, the rebuilding and enlargement of a lean-to porch extension, and alterations to the fenestration, creating a tripartite window to the ground floor and a large horizontal window in the roof hip. To the east, the meeting hall is lit by two sash windows, of the same form as that on the west elevation. There is a small single-storey block extending eastwards from the south end, and a doorway has been inserted between this and the southern meeting hall window. Above is a dormer window. To the north of the meeting hall is another small C20 extension, providing a kitchen for the meeting house, and replacing an earlier catslide extension. The rear of the original cottage has a tripartite window to the ground floor, with a dormer above, extended in the same manner as on the west elevation. The join between the two cottages is visible on the east elevation; the 1832 cottage has a rear doorway and a tripartite window to the ground floor, with a dormer above. The northern lean-to extends beyond the eastern face of the building.

INTERIOR: within the former porch area there is now a small reading room to the west, and a WC to the south-east. The meeting house itself contains the meeting room to the north, with a lobby to the south, and the former gallery above the lobby. The gallery, erected in 1690, is of solid oak construction. Stop-chamfered posts support the gallery, and there are sturdy turned balusters to the balustrade. A folding screen is fitted beneath the gallery, with two hinged five-panel sections to either side of double three-panel doors, and with fixed panels to the ends and framing the gallery. The screen retains its original furniture, including hinges and stays. Rising panelled shutters are fitted behind the balustrade, and are now permanently lowered. The screen is painted on the lobby side, and unpainted within the meeting hall and gallery space. At the north end of the meeting room is the bench or stand for the ministers and elders – the bench is raised on a dais, with tongue and groove dado panelling behind, and a screen to the front; a candleholder once fixed to this screen has been removed. It is possible that originally there was a lower bench in front of the screen, for the elders, with the raised stand behind accommodating travelling ministers. The stand and panelling are C19. Panelling is understood to have been removed from the other walls of the meeting room; it is thought that this was similar to the panelling forming the back of the stand. The hall has two ceiling beams, supported on chamfered timber pilasters, stopped at a central moulding, which possibly once related to the lost panelling. The floor to the meeting hall and lobby is of 1960s woodblock. In the lobby, a C19 strongbox is set into the thickness of the south wall. Rising from the south-east corner of the lobby is the modern stair to gallery. The gallery space, now (2018) in office use, and the gallery shutters are boxed in. The space is partially panelled with C19 tongue and groove boarding. Above the meeting hall and gallery, the C17 roof structure survives intact. The pegged structure has coupled rafters with two collars, and windbraces beneath the purlins; there has been minimal C20 replacement and reinforcement. The purlins and windbraces are visible within the gallery space. A partition has been inserted between the gallery space and the room in the south-west wing, above the porch; the junction between the two ranges was once open. This south-west room also has boarded panelling. The two cottages have been reconfigured internally, with the main ground-floor room of the original cottage having been incorporated into the meeting house, accessed through 1960s openings in the north wall of the meeting hall to either side of the stand. The room has a transverse beam, chamfered with scroll stops, supported centrally on a re-used post. The stack having been removed there is no fireplace in the north wall, but a niche survives at the east end. Other than this ground-floor room, the cottages have been re-arranged to form two flats. The first, accessed via the 1672 doorway, extends across the first floor of both cottages; the roof’s arched tie beams are visible. There are two niches in the former end wall of the C17 cottage. The second flat occupies the ground floor of the 1832 cottage, with small extensions to the north-east; no historic features remain within this part of the building.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the standing wall between the meeting house and Church Street is of brick with a triangular moulded brick coping. The date of the building, ‘1672’, is set into the brickwork in black glazed bricks, the figures are very large, and widely spaced along the length of the wall. At either end of the wall is an opening containing a C20 wrought-iron gate.

To the north, the wall continues, turning east and then south to enclose the burial ground. The wall is at the same height as that fronting the meeting house, and has a similar coping, but is made of flint, punctuated with flush brick piers. There has been some patching and rebuilding to the northern part of the wall, and the eastern and south-eastern sections are partially obscured by growth.

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. The year 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 member’s 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, and that 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 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, 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 facing a bench for the elders; in time a raised stand became common behind this bench, for travelling ministers. 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.

Quaker meetings have taken place at Alton since at least 1662, in which year the preacher Humphrey Smith was taken from a meeting in the town, following which he was imprisoned in Winchester Gaol where he died the next year. In 1664 four Quakers were excommunicated for meeting at a house in Alton Market Place. By 1670 Quakers were meeting at the house of Nicholas Ede in Froyle; there were also Friends living in the local villages of Holybourne, Selborne, Neatham and Binsted.

The Meeting House at Alton was begun and completed in 1672, on land belonging to local Quakers Roger and Ann Gates; the land for the burial ground was included as part of the site from the first. Contributions to the cost of the building were made by 67 local Quakers. A cottage was built to the north under the same roof as part of the original construction; its first occupant, Thomas Bullock, ‘weeded and kept the burial place in order’. A second cottage was added in 1832. In 1690, following the 1689 Act, two galleries were built to accommodate increased numbers; one gallery, which survives to the south, was used for the Women's Meeting. The location of the second gallery is not established; it may have been removed, or the surviving gallery may originally have been divided in two. Panels very similar to those of the existing gallery and screen have been discovered in the Meeting House, and may be associated with a second gallery, or may have been part of the meeting room’s lost wall panelling. The south gallery was used for the Women’s Meeting. In 1730, sash windows were installed, and the floor was re-laid. By the early C20, numbers were declining, and in 1912 the Meeting House closed, re-opening in 1933. By 1961, the building was in a bad state of repair, and work was undertaken by the architect Ernest G. Allen, who refurbished the northern cottage, and linked the other with the Meeting House, removing the building’s two stacks; a stair to the gallery was installed at this time, access formerly having been via an open stair within the porch. In 2002-5 the building's lean-to porch was rebuilt and the open area preceding the entrance enclosed to provide additional rooms; at the same time the lobby's 1960s stair was replaced in the same position.

The Alton Quaker Meeting House is believed to be the second oldest purpose-built meeting house still in use in England, the 1670 example at Hertford being the oldest. The two cottages and the gallery space are currently (2018) rented as residential and office use.

The burial ground to the north of the meeting house is still open, though the last burial took place in 1919; ashes may also be interred. There are about 214 burials recorded, though few stones remain. Notable extant stones include those of the Crowley family, who were local brewers from 1821 (the occultist Aleister Crowley was a member of the family), and relatives of the botanist William Curtis, who was born in Alton.

Reasons for Listing

Alton Quaker Meeting House of 1672, with its front boundary wall and attached burial ground walls, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* as the second earliest Quaker meeting house still in use in England;
* for representing the determination of a group of Hampshire Quakers in building a dedicated meeting house in the face of persecution, with the Alton Meeting continuing here to this day;
* for its association with the adjacent and contemporary burial ground, enclosed by original walls.

Architectural interest:

* despite numerous changes, the building maintains its mid-C17 character, with the original form and use of the meeting house remaining legible;
* the building retains original mid-C17 fabric, particularly a good and intact roof structure;
* the 1690 gallery, erected following the 1689 Act of Toleration, with its moveable screens, is a valuable survival;
* the front boundary wall, with its inset date, is a bold and eloquent feature.

Group value:

* together, the meeting house, front boundary wall, and burial ground walls, all of the same early date, compose a group of very considerable significance.

External Links

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