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.
Quaker meeting houses are generally characterised by simplicity of design, both externally and internally, reflecting the form of worship they were designed to accommodate. The earliest purpose-built meeting houses were built by local craftsmen following regional traditions and were on a domestic scale, frequently resembling vernacular houses; at the same time, a number of older buildings were converted to Quaker use. From the first, most meeting houses shared certain characteristics, containing a well-lit meeting hall with a simple arrangement of seating. In time a raised stand became common behind the bench for the Elders, so that traveling ministers could be better heard. Where possible, a meeting house would provide separate accommodation for the women’s business meetings, and early meeting houses may retain a timber screen, allowing the separation (and combination) of spaces for business and worship. In general, the meeting house will have little or no decoration or enrichment, with joinery frequently left unpainted.
Throughout the C18 and early C19 many new meeting houses were built, or earlier buildings remodelled, with ‘polite’, Classically-informed designs appearing, reflecting architectural trends more widely. However, the buildings were generally of modest size and with minimal ornament, although examples in urban settings tended to be more architecturally ambitious. After 1800, it became more common for meeting houses to be designed by an architect or surveyor. The Victorian and Edwardian periods saw greater stylistic eclecticism, though the Gothic Revival associated with the Established Church was not embraced; on the other hand, Arts and Crafts principles had much in common with those of the Quakers, and a number of meeting houses show the influence of that movement.
There were Quakers in Horsham by 1671 but no meeting house existed until after the Toleration Act of 1689. In 1693, land was acquired (with a 2000-year lease) in the Worthing Road for use as a burial ground and meeting house. There appears to have been a C16 cottage towards the road frontage and a meeting house was probably built behind it, at the rear of the site. The first recorded use of the burial ground took place in 1697. By 1785, the meeting house was in poor condition and the following year, a new one with an attached cottage was built, while the old building was demolished. This opened in 1786. In 1939, it was extended to the rear with a classroom and kitchens designed by the architect Hubert Lidbetter. In 1961, the meeting house was re-roofed and repaired, also by Lidbetter. The most prolific architect of meeting houses was Hubert Lidbetter, whose career spanned the 1920s to the 1960s. He designed four large urban meeting houses, the inter-war examples are in a classical tradition: Friends House, London (1924-27) and Bull Street, Birmingham (1931-33); Liverpool (1941, demolished) and Sheffield (1964, sold and adapted for alternative use) were in a simple mid-century style influenced by modernism. But more typical were his numerous smaller meeting houses of a domestic neo-Georgian character, such as Brentwood, Essex.
The meeting house at Horsham is set back from the road, behind brick boundary walls. The attached burial ground to the front of the meeting house has long been disused and is now landscaped as a garden. All headstones have been removed, apart from two which have been laid flat as paving slabs. These are the headstones for Charles Saunders (died 1881), his wife Rachel (died 1880) and his son Charles (died 1866); and the fossil collector and palaeontologist George Bax Holmes (1803-87) and his wife Mary (died 1876). Bax Holmes is famous for his discovery of the Great Horsham Iguanodon in 1840 whose bones were the model for some of the dinosaurs of 1852-4 (Grade I) in Crystal Palace Park.
Architectural History Practice, 2016, Friends Meeting House: Horsham, accessed 15 December 2019 from
