Nailsworth Quaker Meeting House and attached boundary walls and gateway, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire

Summary

A late-C17 Quaker meeting house, registered in 1689, in Cotswold vernacular style with attached boundary walls and gateway.

Description

A late-C17 Quaker Meeting House, registered in 1689, in Cotswold vernacular style.

MATERIALS
The building is constructed from local rubble limestone, with a Cotswold stone slate roof. Cast aluminium rainwater goods, with one lead hopper dated 2010.

PLAN
The building is rectangular on plan, orientated roughly east-west, with a larger meeting room to the east, and a smaller room to the west now used as a library. There is a small, lean-to extension at the western end. The meeting house is attached to an earlier, mid-C17 house at the south-western corner, forming a right-angled-plan; this building (1 and 2 Quakers Close) is separately listed at Grade II.

EXTERIOR
The building is a domestic-scale, mainly high single-storey building of the later C17, with chamfered stone-mullioned windows with hood moulds and large quoins. The meeting house appears to incorporate elements from an earlier building, which may have formed part of the adjacent house; the junction of the two phases is visible in the change in roof pitch to the main (south) elevation. This elevation has a wide, round-arched central doorway with a half-round stone step, with later-C20 boarded doors. The door surround is stop-chamfered, with a central keystone, and spandrels framed by a square hood mould with large, panelled diagonal label stops. To the left of the door, straddling the earlier building and the meeting house addition, is a small, two-light mullioned window with diamond-leaded iron casements and stone hood mould. Above this, to the left, a similar mullioned window which lights the upper room belongs to the earlier phase. To the right of the entrance, a larger opening has a wide window of two large lights under a stone hood mould, the window now fitted with C20 Crittall-type metal cross-windows with diamond panes. The return elevation to the east has two steep gables with a valley between; that to the left has a blocked doorway under a timber lintel; the right-hand bay has a late-C20 ground-floor sash window in a reduced opening, previously housing a three-light mullioned window with a hood mould. Above this, in the gable, is a two-light mullioned window with hood mould, possibly originally for a loft but now providing high-level additional light to the meeting room. The rear (north) elevation is blind, with C20 refacing. The west gable-end elevation has evidence of partial stone infilling in the central valley. The right-hand gable, linked to the adjoining house, is windowless and covered in part by the later lean-to addition, and has a square ridge stack. The left-hand bay has a modern three-light window with diamond leaded panes to the ground floor, and an altered two-light window to the upper room, with Crittal-style cross-window matching those in the main elevation.

INTERIOR
The main entrance gives access into a small, early-C19 panelled timber lobby, with doors leading to the left into the secondary room (in 2018 in use as the library) and to the right, into the main meeting room. The two rooms are divided by a panelled partition with vertically-sliding shutters flanked by two chamfered posts on high stone plinths, which rise through both floors to support the roof valley above. The partition is fixed into the large-section, chamfered ceiling beam. In the south-west corner of the library, a probably C17 ledged-and-boarded door with wrought-iron strap hinges leads to a stone winder stair, the treads later covered with oak boarding, leading to the upper room. The stair terminates at a small landing with a short gallery balustrade and partly-exposed roof timbers, which then gives access through a pegged C18 doorway with four-panelled door to the upper room. The upper floor retains its elm floorboards and historic graffiti on the stone window cills, including the dates 1683 and 1684, prior to the building’s formal registration as a meeting house. An internal, shuttered window, shown in historic photographs, which once gave onto the meeting room has been covered over but remains in situ.

The interior of the meeting room essentially dates from the early C19, with a raised-and-fielded, high panelled dado around the perimeter, which sweeps up behind the stand on the east side. The stand has fixed seating and a raised and fielded panelled front, with a fixed bench in front. The joinery is all of stripped pine, which was previously (until the 1950s) painted dark green. The floor is boarded; the walls and ceiling are plastered. On the east side, an upper window, possibly originally serving a loft, has been adapted to give light to the space below. A small portion of the roof structure above the meeting room shows a pegged structure with diagonally-set ridge piece and two rows of purlins, and a large number of original common rafters.

From the library, modern double doors in the western wall give access into the later lean-to extension (excluded from the listing).

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES
The courtyard formed by the meeting house, 1 and 2 Quakers Close and the former Newman’s Wool Warehouse (now part of Cossack Court) is enclosed by a short BOUNDARY WALL and GATEWAY on its eastern side. The wall is built from squared and coursed limestone with flat limestone capping, ramped up on either side to the gateway, which is formed from a pair of monolithic limestone gatepiers, with a pair of iron gates with elaborate fleur-de-lys finials to the railings.

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.

George Fox’s journal records that he visited Nailsworth twice. Friends were active in the area by 1655, and rented a cottage in what is now Quakers Close, part of which was later purchased and incorporated in the present meeting house. This was registered in 1689. It is not certain whether the meeting house was a new building, added to an existing cottage at the north end - which retains graffiti dates of 1683 and 1684 on the first floor window cills - or whether it was a conversion of an existing farm building. There is a small burial ground in the courtyard to the front of the meeting house, though a principal burial ground was acquired by the meeting at nearby Shortwood by 1695. Nailsworth became the venue for the monthly meeting for central Gloucestershire, including Cirencester, Painswick, Tetbury, and Stinchcombe. According to Stell (see SOURCES), repairs were carried out in 1794 and 1819, and Butler (see SOURCES) says that further work took place in 1807. During one of the refurbishments in the early C19, the building was refitted, with an internal lobby, ministers’ stand, panelling and shuttered partition added between the two ground-floor spaces. It was probably also about this time that the mullioned window to the right of the main entrance was possibly enlarged and provided with Georgian Gothick sash windows with intersecting glazing bars (shown in undated photograph provided by the local meeting, which also shows Georgian panelled doors at the main entrance, now replaced with boarded doors). Associated alterations were made to the fenestration of the eastern gable end.

Membership of the meeting declined in the C19, with only six people attending meeting for worship at the time of the 1851 census, but the fortunes of the meeting revived in the C20. A photograph of 1957 shows timber propping of the central valley in the meeting room. These were later replaced by a substantial beam supported by two circular steel posts placed nearer to the side walls. It also shows the three-light mullioned and transomed window which also offered visual communication between the upper room and the main meeting room, which was later covered to improve draughts and soundproofing, though left in situ.

The north (rear) wall of the meeting house was refaced and the roof repaired in 1985, and in 1991-92 a single-storey lean-to addition at the rear was extended and the adjoining cottages refurbished, adapted and a doorway opened into the meeting house extension from 1 Quakers Close (architects Meers & Swindell). Further major repairs were undertaken in 1994 and 2010.

Reasons for Listing

Nailsworth Quaker Meeting House, dating from the early 1680s, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as a well-preserved, late-C17 meeting house, reflecting local vernacular building traditions;
* the interior retains its simple form, with a suite of early-C19 fixtures and fittings in the main meeting room; the survival of shuttered openings to the adjoining rooms clearly reflects the congregation’s historic mode of worship.

Historic interest:
* the meeting house is an early example, which has been in continuous use for worship since at least 1689;

Group value:
* for its strong association with the adjoining cottages in Quakers Close (listed Grade II), one of which was used for the Friends’ meeting prior to the building of the present meeting house.

External Links

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