Meeting houses open to public

Almost fifty Meeting houses will open as part of the annual Heritage Open Days initiative

Almost fifty Meeting houses are to open to the public next weekend as part of the annual Heritage Open Days initiative.

Between 11 and 14 September, the public will be able to visit buildings ranging from the 300-year-old Meeting house at Rickfords Hill in Aylesbury to the brand new Kingston Quaker Centre in Surrey, officially opened just the weekend before the event.

Several Meetings are organising exhibitions to coincide with Heritage Open Days. These include Dorking Meeting’s ‘My dear Auntie’, a display of letters and photos from a conscientious objector, and an exhibition on the Friends Ambulance Unit at Central Manchester Quaker Meeting House.

The Meeting houses involved are spread across England, with Yorkshire, Birmingham, Gloucestershire and Surrey particularly well represented.

‘Visiting a Meeting house offers the chance to both see some wonderful historic architecture and to gain an insight into the role of Meeting houses and learn a little more about the Quaker religion – a very different experience from visiting a conventional church’, Heritage Open Days media manager Annabelle Thorpe told the Friend.

London Open House Weekend takes place a week later, on 20-21 September. Among the buildings open to the public then will be Wandsworth Meeting House, the oldest in London, and the Quaker Adult School Hall in Croydon, which was built in 1908 in the Arts and Crafts tradition.

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