Gildersome Quaker Meeting House, including gatehouse range, cottage and boundary wall, Gildersome, Leeds

Summary

Quaker meeting house, 1756, with a cottage of around 1804, and a gatehouse range of 1849.

Description

Quaker meeting house, 1756, with a cottage of around 1804, and a gatehouse range of 1849.

MATERIALS: mainly coursed millstone grit, with an ashlar front elevation to the meeting house. Brick and Welsh slate roof coverings to the cottage. Original stone-slate roof coverings survive to the gatehouse range but the meeting house has replacement artificial-stone slate roof coverings.

PLAN: the meeting house complex is situated on the east side of Street Lane and is bounded by the grounds of Gildersome Primary School to the north and east, and buildings and gardens to the south, and Street Lane on the west. The complex consists of a gatehouse range lying parallel to Street Lane, with a cottage attached at a right angle to the north-east corner. To the east of the cottage, and in the same alignment, is the detached meeting house, with a burial ground immediately to the east.

EXTERIOR:

GATEHOUSE RANGE and COTTAGE: the gatehouse range is located alongside School Lane and forms the main entrance to the meeting house complex. It consists of a two-storey gatehouse with an arched carriageway entrance at ground-floor level and a three-over-six sash window to the first floor with a wedge lintel on each west and east side. A doorway with a four-panel door on the south inside wall of the carriageway provides access to the first-floor former groom's room. Projecting from the north side of the gatehouse and running alongside Street Lane is the former coach house and stables, which is single-storey in height and does not have any openings on the west side facing Street Lane. On the east side the coach house entrance is partly obscured by a modern conservatory attached to the front of the neighbouring cottage. The lower part of the large entrance opening has been altered to accommodate a modern garage door on the left and a window and door on the right through to the conservatory. At the northern end of the east elevation is a doorway with a large lintel accessing the stables and an adjacent window with replaced uPVC glazing. Projecting out from the range at a right angle is a lower single-storey cottage that, in contrast to the rest of the buildings on the site, is constructed of mellow red brick with a Welsh slate roof and a tall brick ridge stack at the east gable end. The cottage's front (south) elevation is now largely obscured by a late-C20 conservatory structure* (the conservatory is not of special interest and is excluded from the listing), but the original door and window openings survive with replaced C20 sash-style casement glazing and glazed double doors. On the north (rear) elevation is a rendered lean-to outshut with windows with deep chamfered sills and replacement uPVC glazing. Attached to the east end of the cottage and bridging the short gap to the meeting house is a high engineered-brick wall with a pedestrian gateway through to the cottage's small private garden area and the meeting house's outside toilet.

MEETING HOUSE: the meeting house is single-storey and four-bays long with a short ridgestack at the west gable end and an ashlar south elevation incorporating the entrance. The rest of the building is of coursed millstone grit, although the north elevation and west gable end are now covered by render, and the east gable end is whitewashed. The pitched roof has timber guttering supported on carved stone corbels and replaced artificial-stone slate coverings. Downpipes have been replaced in uPVC. The principal south elevation rises from a stone plinth and has four two-over-two sash windows with integral lintels and slightly projecting sills; that to the western end is flanked by two doorways with tie-stone jambs. The doorway on the left has a four-panel split-opening door and leads into the former school room, whilst that to the right has a six-panel door and leads into the meeting room. The north elevation has two windows, which are in the same style as those to the front, and at the east end is a small rendered lean-to containing toilets with doorways at each east and west end for separate male and female access.

BOUNDARY WALL: enclosing the entire site to the north, east and south, including the burial ground, is a tall millstone-grit wall topped by rounded copings. The wall is mainly of coursed stone, but also incorporates crazy-paving sections on the north side, along with a blocked-up arched pedestrian gateway that originally served the cottage. The north-west corner also rises above the rest of the wall and incorporates a shaped-domed cap in the style of a gate pier.

INTERIOR:

MEETING HOUSE: the meeting house is subdivided internally into two spaces: the meeting room and a small former school room at the west end. The meeting room, which has a floorboard floor with a central stone slab (now - 2021 - covered by a carpet runner) that formerly held a stove, has a later inserted panelled vestibule lined with coat hooks just inside the entrance. A tongue and groove panelled dado runs around the room's north, east, and south walls, and incorporates a raised Elders' platform at the east end with two tiers of bench seating. A panelled screen with a central doorway separates the two rooms from each other; the lower part of the screen is hinged and incorporates further coat hooks on the meeting room side, and can be raised to fasten onto long cast-iron hooks hanging from the school room ceiling. The former school room has a plain dado topped by a moulded cornice and a chimneybreast to the west wall with a later fire surround and tiled insert. To the right of the chimneybreast is a built-in cupboard and to the left is a row of coat hooks next to the external school room door. A flip-down shelf, that would have been used as a desk, is attached to the dividing screen with built-in ink wells in its ledge. A modern kitchenette has been inserted along the north wall. The school room also contains two C17 gravestones dating to the 1660s that were formerly attached to the south elevation and were brought from the earlier graveyard and meeting house.

GATEHOUSE RANGE and COTTAGE: the gatehouse contains a steep narrow timber stair flight that leads up to a first-floor room with a floorboard floor and a chimneybreast to the north wall (the fireplace has been removed). The coach house has partly whitewashed walls, a lath and plaster ceiling with a loft hatch opening, and a concrete floor. It is divided from the stables by a brick wall with an internal window and a doorway with a plank and batten door. The stables has a stone-flag and stone-sett floor and retains original timber stall dividers, hay rack and cast-iron tethering rings. The interior of the cottage was not inspected.

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 1,000 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. 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.

In the C17 Friends from the Gildersome area travelled into Leeds until a meeting house was constructed in Gildersome in 1709. By the middle of the century this meeting house had become too small and land off Street Lane was purchased for £35 from John Reyner for a new meeting house and burial ground. The present Gildersome Quaker Meeting House was constructed in 1756 and the earlier meeting house was subsequently sold. A small single-storey cottage was added in around 1804-1810, and a gatehouse, coach house and stables were added in 1849.

Reasons for Listing

Gildersome Quaker Meeting House, including a gatehouse range, cottage and boundary wall, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* despite the increased urbanisation of this once-rural area this Quaker complex retains its full suite of C18 and C19 buildings, including meeting house, gatehouse range, cottage, and enclosing boundary wall;
* its vernacular styling is free of extraneous ornamentation and suitably reflects the restraint of Quakerism and its values of simplicity, equality, community and peace;
* key interior features remain, including the Elders' platform and bench seating, panelled dado and dividing screen in the meeting room, a desk shelf with ink wells in the school room, and timber stall dividers, hay rack and cast-iron tethering rings in the gatehouse range's stables; the latter features in particular being increasingly rare survivals nationally in a Quaker context.

External Links

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