Friends Meeting House

Details

YORK STREET 656-1/41/1936 (South side) Friends Meeting House 12/06/50

GV II

Friends' Meeting House, formerly a Freemasons' Hall, dating from 1817-19, by William Wilkins (1778-1839), in a Greek Revival style.

MATERIALS: the building has a limestone ashlar front, with coursed limestone rubble to the sides and rear; the roof is not visible apart from two prominent cylindrical lanterns.

PLAN: On plan, the building is roughly rectangular, with a central principal chamber, flanked by secondary rooms to the east and a staircase to the west, and a projecting portico to the north. The basement has detached vaults running to the north, under the road.

EXTERIOR: The building has a single storey and basement. The central block is of three bays, flanked by lower rusticated bays which house six panel, raised and fielded entrance doors. The main block has a projecting, pedimented Ionic portico with two columns in antis, and a blind central doorway with pylon architrave; there is a full entablature above. The first and third bays of the central block have pylon windows with shouldered architrave and cornice, similar to the blind doorway under the portico, housing six-over-six sash windows. The side elevations retain their cast iron rainwater heads with Masonic devices. The west elevation has a pair of three-over-three sash windows under a timber lintel, with a similar window lighting the stair below. The rear elevation has two sash windows to the ground floor and three to the basement, the lower windows set in dressed stone surrounds.

INTERIOR: The interior has a lobby with staircase to the west, leading into the Great Room; this has a foliate frieze with egg-and-dart moulding above, below a coved ceiling, six-panelled doors set in reeded doorcases and fireplaces with marble slips and timber surrounds, the cast iron fireplaces having decoration to match that on the doors. The room was originally top-lit only by the two high, circular lanterns, which have fine plaster details to their ceilings. To the east, the former committee room has a plain fireplace, and the lobby to the west retains its egg-and-dart moulding. The dog leg stair, in stone with square section stick balusters and ramped mahogany-veneer handrail, leads to the basement, with an original WC to the rear at the bottom of the first flight. A second meeting room occupies the majority of the space; it has a later moulded Gothic plaster frieze at picture rail height and an inserted Gothic window with a four-centred arched top to the rear. Rooms used originally for Masonic functions are ranged to the north, while to the east, a two-bedroomed flat has been created from the space formerly occupied by the second staircase, and the kitchen and wine cellar which served the Masonic Hall. A shallow forecourt leads to the seven stone-lined, round-arched vaults running under the road to the north.

HISTORY: The Friends' Meeting House was built as a Masonic Hall for the local Lodges, and opened on 23 September 1819. It was an expensive undertaking and the Freemasons soon found that they could not afford the building. After a tontine failed to raise sufficient funds for its upkeep, despite the renting out of the Great Room for entertainments, the Freemasons left the building in the 1820s. It was used for a variety of purposes, first as an Assembly Room and exhibition space, and by the 1830s as a Non-conformist chapel, until leased in 1842 by the Reverend J Wallinger, and re-opened as the Bethesda Chapel, an event commemorated by the inclusion of the date '1842' on the pediment above the portico. Since 1866, the building has been the home of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). In the 1980s, the building was altered to provide a basement flat and to allow community use of some of the spaces.

SOURCES: Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bath (1980) 68-9, 83 Neil Jackson, Nineteenth Century Bath: Architects and Architecture (1991) 45-8 R W Liscombe, William Wilkins 1778-1839 (1980) 117-8 Christopher Stell, An Inventory of Non-Conformist Chapels and Meeting-Houses in South West England (RCHME 19914) 164SOM 16

REASON FOR DESIGNATION: The Friends' Meeting House in Bath is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * The building, a former Masonic Hall by William Wilkins (1778-1839) is a fine example of Greek Revival building by a renowned architect in this idiom, whose commissions included the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square * The elegant, correct Greek façade is an important example of this style in Bath, and forms a group with nos. 11-15 York Street, a terrace of Greek Revival houses which run opposite the Friends' Meeting House * The interior, in particular the impressive top-lit Great Room, retains its C19 decorative schemes

Listing NGR: ST7514864712

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

511225

Legacy System:

LBS

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