Historic England recognises beauty of Meeting houses
As part of a news round-up, Rebecca Hardy looks at the recognition given to seventeen Quaker Meeting houses by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
The beauty of Quaker buildings was officially recognised when seventeen Meeting houses were granted listed status or had their listed status upgraded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the advice of Historic England.
Described by Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, as ‘precious pockets of calm in an otherwise hectic world’, the Meeting houses were based in places ranging from Cumbria to Oxfordshire and Worcestershire to London. Six of the oldest Meeting houses were given greater protection and recognition by having their listed status upgraded. Hertford Meeting house, the oldest in the world still in continuous use and built in 1670, was upgraded to Grade I protected status in recognition of its ‘exceptional historic significance’.
Eleven were listed at Grade II for the first time, with new listings including the Meeting house in Cartmel designed by architect of the Natural History Museum, Alfred Waterhouse; the seventeenth century Aylesbury Meeting House; and the 1970s concrete Meeting house in London’s Blackheath.
Duncan Wilson praised the ‘largely unsung group of fascinating and surprisingly varied buildings that reflect the history, attitudes and ethos of the Quaker movement’.
Ingrid Greenhow, who clerked the Quaker Meeting Houses Heritage Project, said she was ‘delighted’ at the recognition and noted: ‘It is particularly heartening to see examples of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Meeting houses being listed.’
The news led to articles and pictures in the press including ITV news praising Quaker Meeting houses for their ‘quiet simplicity’. The listings followed a national survey of Meeting houses still in use or in Quaker ownership that was commissioned by Historic England in partnership with the Religious Society of Friends.
