The Friends Meeting House, including boundary wall with doorway and ironwork gates plus railings

Cadw's description

Location

Situated set back between Robert Street and Trafalgar Road.

History

1811 Quaker Meeting House designed by Griffith Watkins of Haverfordwest for the community of Nantucket whalers who came to found Milford in l792-3.

Exterior

Unpainted roughcast with slate hipped eaves roof, single storey, small-scale with later centre porch and one window each side. Roof has swept eaves and boarded soffit, windows are large cambered-headed 24-pane sashes with stone sills, the two to front being matched by two on rear wall. The centre porch is gabled and bargeboarded with cambered-headed doorway, double doors and cambered-headed 6-pane window above under short stone shelf.

Front wall to road: red rubble stone with roughcast on road front, camber-headed doorway with 'Friends Meeting House' in raised letters. Inside is small semi-circular enclosure with roughcast dwarf walls, spearhead iron railings and centre spearhead gate openwork iron gatepiers of four urn-capped iron stanchions, presumably the original entry.

Interior

Within porch are two fielded-panel doors, reflecting the internal arrangement, where the N and S parts of the meeting-house were divided by a moveable screen, since made solid. Deep coved ceiling with modest cornice. The N end has the original elders' gallery, a raised dais with simple bench and high back panelling, approached by centre steps w ith fielded panelled front each side. Steps have turned newels and ramped rails. Bench each side against dais front with end armrests. Five original open-back benches survive, some with added mid-rail. In S section, some original panelling and S wall fireplace.

Reason for designation

One of the most important Friends' Meeting Houses in Wales, and significant in the history of Milford as being built for the Nantucket whalers, who are mostly buried in the small graveyard behind.