Friends Meeting House

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Two-storey Quaker meeting house of 1874, which closed in 2000 and is currently undergoing conversion to a dwelling house, designed with some classical features. The building is located on the south side of Halfpenny gate Road, roughly 2.3km north-east of Moira, to the east of a large former Quaker-run agricultural school, founded in 1836, but now largely abandoned. In front of the building is an overgrown garden, and to the east is a newly-built garage.

The building is basically rectangular in plan with an off-centre gabled porch projection to north set within a shallow full-height gabled bay to north, and shallow full-height projections to north-east and north-west; to the rear a small single-storey projection was recently removed. The front elevation faces north, and, but for the porch projection on the left side, is symmetrical.

Window openings are grouped with single, paired and tripartite arrangements. Most have moulded surrounds with bead-chamfer stopped reveals; these rest on common sills that encircle the building as stringcourses. Further stringcourses encircle the building, intersecting at the levels of the window arch imposts. Directly below each opening is a small cast-iron ventilation grill. Frames are painted timber; these are fixed lights with margin panes; a number of frames are missing.

Walls are constructed in rubble fieldstone; below the ground floor stringcourse these are exposed, above they are finished with roughcast render (part removed). Walls rest on a battered plinth; a replacement chamfered red clay brick articulates the junction between the plinth and the upper walling. The building is encircled with broad moulded stringcourses; these merge with matching window surrounds. Missing render reveals that corners and openings are formed in red clay brick.

The pitched roof is covered with natural slate. There is a moulded eaves course and rainwater goods are uPVC. To the centre of the ridge there is a new brick chimneystack.

The gabled ‘sentry-box’ style porch projection is set to the left side of the north front façade. This is single-storey. The front door opening is semi-circular arched with moulded render surround; the painted timber panelled door has semi-circular headed upper panels. Each side of the porch has a narrow, flat-headed slit window. To the right there is a paired window opening while to the centre of the first floor there is a tripartite arrangement.

To the right side of the east façade is the gabled two-storey stair projection; this has centrally positioned window openings, one to ground and one to first floor. The left side is single-storey and has four evenly spaced window openings.

The rear south façade has centrally positioned paired window openings.

The west façade has a paired window arrangement to the ground floor of the stair projection, but is otherwise an identical, mirror image, of the east façade.

The site is protected with temporary site railings.

Historical information

This meeting house dates from 1874. It was built mainly through the efforts of William Davidson, the then Headmaster of the neighbouring Brookfield Agricultural School, (founded by the Society in 1836), and the mill-owner John Grubb Richardson, whose family were benefactors of the school. The Richardsons paid for the land on which the meeting house was located and much of the cost of the building itself. When Quaker involvement in the school ceased in 1922 the meeting continued, although with smaller attendances.

The meeting house was repaired in 1986, but reducing members and the cost of the upkeep of the building forced the ‘laying down’ of the meeting in 2000.

References- Primary sources
1 PRONI VAL12B/8/14A Annual valuation revision book, Magheramesk ED, 1863-79
2 PRONI VAL12B/8/14B Annual valuation revision book, Magheramesk ED, 1880-89
3 PRONI VAL12B/8/14C Annual valuation revision book, Magheramesk ED, 1890-1908
4 PRONI OS6/1/67/3 OS map. County Antrim sheet 67, 1900
5 PRONI VAL12B/8/14D Annual valuation revision book, Magheramesk ED, 1908-29
6 PRONI VAL3C/1/27 First General Revaluation of Northern Ireland, Lisburn Rural ED,
1936-57
7 PRONI VAL4B/1/52 Second General Revaluation of Northern Ireland, Lisburn Rural ED,
1957-72

Secondary sources
1 Newhouse, Neville H., ‘History of Friends School Lisburn, (1974)
2 Chapman, George.R., “Friends Agricultural School- near Moria, 1836-1922” in 'Review- Journal of the Craigavon Historical Society', vol 5. no.3 (1986)
3 Butler, David M., 'Quaker Meeting House of Ireland' (Irish Friends Historical Committee, 2004), pp.152-53

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

An externally largely intact (former) Quaker Meeting house of the mid 1870's. The building is designed with simplified classical detailing much favoured by the Society. Unfortunately with the change of use to a dwelling the interior layout and detailing has been largely changed and whilst it has group value with the adjacent agricultural school also built by the Quakers HB19.03.060 and historical interest its architecural interest is insufficent to warrant listing.