Meeting Houses

Of the many new religious groups that emerged from the ferment of ideas that characterised the Civil War and Commonwealth era (1630s to 1666), the Quakers proved to be one of the best organised and most influential. They have also gone further than other dissenting congregations in abandoning the architectural form that has been used for worship since the earliest days of Christianity by inventing a new kind of worship space – the meeting house. Chris Catling reports on a study of this distinctive Quaker building and its 17th-century origins.

32 pages : 22 cm

Originally published, London , Friends Home Service Committee,1974

Watercolour painting by Kenneth Rowntree, 'Interior of the Friends Meeting House, Great Bardfield', from the Recording Britain Collection (Essex); England, 1942.

Photograph of Quakers Meeting House, Alton, Hampshire, Rev.A.C.Hervey, 1900