15 July 2024

The Quaker Meeting House
on Jesus Lane in central
Cambridge has a story
that dates back to 1659

Friends’ Meeting House on the corner of Jesus Lane and Park Street in central Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

This month marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of George Fox (1624-1691), the founding figure in the Religious Society of Friends, better known as Quakers. When I was at the USPG conference in High Leigh last week, I revisited the former Friends’ Meeting in Hoddesdon, and it seemed appropriate while I was in Cambridge on my way to and from the conference to look again at the Quaker meeting house on Jesus Lane in Cambridge.

Friends Meeting House is at 12 Jesus Lane, Cambridge, although the entrance in Park Street. It is beside the ADC Theatre and is on a corner facing Little Trinity, which has been described as one of the best domestic buildings in Cambridge.

On the other side of the street, the north wall of Sidney Sussex College runs along this west end of Jesus Lane, and there were years when I had rooms first on Stairs K in and later on Stairs M in Cloisters Court in Sidney Sussex, overlooking this stretch of Jesus Lane.

Jesus Lane begins at the junction of Sidney Street and Bridge Street at the west and runs to a roundabout at the east, where it joins King Street which runs parallel with Jesus Lane.

The buildings on Jesus Lane include: Jesus College on the north side of the street; Sidney Sussex College on the south side of Jesus Lane at the west end; Wesley House, the Methodist theological centre; the neighbouring home of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies; Westcott House, the Anglican theological college; and All Saints’ Church (1863-1870), designed by the Victorian architect GF Bodley and regarded as one of the best examples of Victorian churches in Cambridge.

Close to the Quaker meeting house, the Pitt Club at 7a Jesus Lane is a neoclassical building designed in 1863 as the Victorian Roman Baths, and with Pizza Express on the ground floor.

The Quaker presence in Cambridge dates back to at least 1659, when Friends rented a house near Sidney Sussex College for meetings. Ann Docwra (1624-1710) gave several houses in Jesus Lane to Friends in 1700, including one for use as a meeting house and another cottage that remained hers to use in her lifetime.

Apparently, the meeting house and the adjoining burial ground had already been in Quaker use before that date. Ten years later, Ann Docwra left about 60 acres in Fulbourn in her will to Friends.

A new meeting house was built on part of the site on Jesus Lane in 1776-1777, including over the former burial ground, and adjacent to Ann Docwra’s cottage.

The Quaker meeting in Cambridge was ‘laid down’ or discontinued between 1795 and 1884, and the meeting house was used for a number of purposes.

Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838), a Quaker and an education innovator, spoke in the Town Hall in Cambridge in 1808 on Public Elementary Education, and school run on Lancaster’s principles was run in the disused meeting house for about 10 years, until new premises were needed and the school at Castle End was built.

The Revd William Leeke founded a Sunday school in the building in 1827, and the Jesus Lane Sunday School remained until 1833 when it moved to the King Street Day School, and later to Paradise Street.

The building was let to the Corporation in 1855 to accommodate first Free Library in Cambridge under John Pink. The reading room had about 1,200 books. Three years later, a lending library was set up. The library was moved to Wheeler Street, beside the Guildhall in 1862.

When the university gradually opened to non-conformists, the number of Quakers in Cambridge grew and the meeting was revived in 1884. The meeting house was described in 1883 as a square room with a brass-railed platform and a gallery, with seating for 155.

But the foundations of the meeting house were inadequate because it was built over the former burial ground and due to the presence of Civil War defences known as the ‘King’s Ditch’. The meeting house was repaired in due 1894-1895, the foundations were strengthened with lime and cement, and the plan of the meeting room was changed from a square to a rectangle. The former gallery was partly removed and partly enclosed to create a children’s room, and a foyer was provided facing onto Park Street.

Ann Docwra’s cottage at the corner of Jesus Lane and Park Street was demolished and rebuilt as a caretaker’s residence in the 1890s. The architect was Edwin Boys.

A local historian AB Gray recounts that in 1894 when the new foundations were being excavated on the site, a number of human skeletons were unearthed. It was said at the time that they belonged to some prehistoric tribe, although the site had also been a Quaker burial ground on the site.

The Quaker architect Fred Rowntree (1860-1927) prepared a proposal in 1919 to extend onto the site of 11 Jesus Lane, an adjacent public house, previously known as the Taylor’s Arms. This house had been acquired by a local Quaker Caroline Stephen, an aunt of Virginia Woolf. Her will in 1909 included the provision that once the lease expired in 1922 Friends would have the option to acquire it, and this happened in 1922.

A reduced version of Rowntree’s scheme was carried out in 1927, leaving No 11 largely unaltered. A fire damaged the buildings in 1949 and the meeting house was reopened in 1950 after repairs, including a new concrete roof to the meeting room. Once again the architects were Fred Rowntree & Sons.

The accommodation in the meeting house was inadequate by the 1960s. The corner building, once the caretaker’s cottage, was demolished in 1969 and replaced by a new entrance block designed by the architect William E Barnes of Letchworth. A warden’s flat was created on the two upper storeys of 11 Jesus Lane and on the second floor of the entrance block, and some alterations were made to the 1776-1777 meeting room. An accessible toilet was installed(In the 1990s.

In recent years, the ground floor shop and one first floor room in 11 Jesus Lane have been rented out to a hairdresser.

Today, the meeting house complex consists of three separate buildings on the corner of Jesus Lane and Park Street: the 18th-century building containing the meeting room in Park Street; the 1969 entrance block on the corner; and the former public house at No 11 Jesus Lane. All three parts are internally connected.

The ground floor includes the entrance lobby, the entrance hall, stairwell, a lift and a library; a small hall (the Ann Docwra Room), as well as toilets and a kitchen, the meeting room and the annex. The meeting room is lit by three arched windows to the west, and one similar window to the south. The building has few furnishings of note, apart from a number of 19th-century benches with curved armrests and turned legs that are placed around the edge of the meeting room.

The Alden Wright Room is on the first floor. The second floor includes the warden’s flat.

The meeting house is not listed, and it has probably been altered too much to be included in the statutory list. It has been substantially altered and partly rebuilt on several occasions but its original form is still legible. Due to its historical significance in the city it could be included on the council list of buildings of local interest.

The meeting house is on a corner site in the centre of Cambridge, opposite Sidney Sussex College, and the main views of complex are from Jesus Lane and Park Street.. Around the corner in Park Street is the ADC Theatre, while further west in Jesus Lane is the Pitt Club, while to the north-west are the mediaeval Round Church and the Cambridge Union Society Building (1866).

The archaeological potential of the wider area is high. In the past, Roman pottery, Saxon brooches and a Saxon burial have been found in Jesus Lane. Overall, the archaeological potential of the site is considered to be high, with potential for pre-historical, Roman and mediaeval finds.

The meeting house has all the amenities it needs, and has a resident warden. Friends use the meeting house for about 30 hours a week, and the building is available for community lettings.

• There are two Meeting for Worship on Sundays: 9 to 10 am (no online attendance); and at 10:30 am (blended, online attendance possible). Meetings for Worship also take place on Wednesdays (1:15 to 1:45pm, blended, preceded by a simple lunch at 12:30) and on third Mondays (7:30 to 9 pm).

The Quaker meeting house in central Cambridge is close to the ADC Theatre and Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024:
67, Monday 15 July 2024, Saint Swithun

Saint Swithun depicted on the gateway at Magdalen College, Oxford … is today’s weather going to last for 40 days? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church and this week began with the Seventh Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VII). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (15 July) remembers Saint Swithun (ca 862), Bishop of Winchester, and Saint Bonaventure (1274), Friar, Bishop and Teacher of the Faith.

I am planning to visit Tamworth and Lichfield later today. But, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The gateway at Magdalen College, Oxford with Saint Mary Magdalen (centre) between Saint Swithun (right) and Bishop William Waynflete (left) of Winchester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 5: 43-48 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’

Patrick Gale’s ‘A Perfectly Good Man’ … a reminder of how we speak of being ‘Good Enough’ and being ‘Perfect’

This morning’s reflection:

We are half-through July, yet this has hardly been perfect summer weather. Today is Saint Swithun’s Day, so many people – in a very traditional English way of being superstitious – may be half concerned that whatever weather we have today is going to continue for the next 40 days, imperfect as it may be.

Last night’s England v Spain Euro final could have been a very perfect evening indeed. But iin many ways it was a good end to what has been a very good championship for an English team that represents so much that is good in England today. They were more than good enough as a team, but too often in our lives we demand what is perfect at the expense of delighting in what is good and what is good enough.

However, this morning I am wrestling with the advice in this Gospel reading: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5: 48).

I certainly cannot ever see myself as being perfect, or even aspiring to be perfect. But this Gospel advice this morning reminds me of Patrick Gale’s novel, A Perfectly Good Man, one of the books that was part of my holiday reading some years ago.

I had never read any of his novels before, but this book was recommended to me by someone who felt she was eerily reading a book about someone who knew more about me than she realised was possible.

TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker’ begins with the words:

In my beginning is my end.

And it closes:

In my end is my beginning.

Without giving away the story line of this book, in many ways these two lines could describe how Patrick Gale narrates his story in A Perfectly Good Man. As I read it, I was not waiting to discover what happens in the end, but was waiting for an end that could tell me why all that is happening is taking place.

I was surprised at the writer’s twists and turns, but more taken aback when I felt I was holding up a mirror to myself.

There is the description of farm life that brought me back to a time when I lived on my grandmother’s farm.

There was the religious experience in teenage years that become life-changing for the main character, Father Barnaby Johnson.

There is his approach to spirituality and liturgy, his choice of reading, and the off-centre involvement of Quakers.

I am more positive about my experiences of old second-hand bookshops, but I could identify with his experience of visiting the old ancestral home in rural England.

There is his dysfunctional relationship with his father, his liberal boarding school or minor public school education, a sibling who died while he is still in his teens, an adoption, and a feeling of being marginalised or even being an outsider at a parent’s funeral.

There is his participation in street protests in 1980s England that parallels my own role in CND protests.

There are developed interests in art and the artist, in museums and music.

And there is the powerful use of a Facebook group today and the impact of social media.

Even the graffiti on the church walls, which may shock many readers, even those who are not church-going, reminded me of graffiti I found on a church wall many years ago while I was providing Sunday cover.

And there is the chilling parishioner, Modest Carlsson, who shows that cruelty and evil can stalk the land.

This is a very Anglican story about a very Anglican priest.

It is a life story presented almost like a series of photographs that have fallen out of a family album and that are put back in a random way, yet only make sense when they are all looked at each in turn. The primary suspense in this novel lies not in the ‘what’, but the ‘when’ and ‘how.’

Time and again, in recent months, I have asked who decided in recent years that ‘good enough’ is simply not good enough, that we have to excel?

‘Please don’t feel you always have to be good,’ eight-year-old Barnaby Johnson is advised close to the end of this novel. ‘Sometimes you’re so good it hurts to watch you.’

They are wise words, indeed. But too often they go largely unheeded. Father Barnaby is a complex and nuanced character. Yet he is also an ordinary man, with all the sinfulness, temptations and ambiguities of a good but ordinary man.

It is also about cruelty, deception and love, and it is written with compassion and understanding.

I have only been to Cornwall once, but many his descriptions of England could be of places I know and love near Lichfield and in rural south Staffordshire, or in East Anglia, North Wiltshire or the West Country, although the setting could easily be moved to many parts of Ireland too.

This is a discussion of what it means to be a good person that should be read by every priest and every aspiring priest. Once again, it is an example of a novelist dealing with religion and belief in the 21st century, and with so many of the issues debated in pastoral theology today.

In the many flashbacks I have from my childhood, one is of being told I needed to try harder.

‘I’m doing my best,’ was my quick retort.

‘Well, your best is simply not good enough’ was the cruel response from an adult who thought this was being smart and witty, but who never knew how to be loving and encouraging.

Rather than crumbling under his response, I have been content enough ever since to try to do my best and to accept that as being good enough. I do not seek to be perfect or need to be perfect in the eyes of others.

‘The Perfect Blend’ … a sign in a café in Charleville, Co Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 15 July 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Advocacy, human, environmental and territorial rights programme in Brazil.’ This theme was introduced yesterday by the Revd Dr Rodrigo Espiúca dos Anjos Siqueira, Diocesan Officer for human, environmental and territorial rights in the Anglican Diocese of Brasilia.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 15 July 2024) invites us to pray:

Pray for the advancement of sexual and reproductive rights for all, especially women and those affected by gender-based prejudice and violence.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
by whose grace we celebrate again
the feast of your servant Swithun:
grant that, as he governed with gentleness
the people committed to his care,
so we, rejoicing in our Christian inheritance,
may always seek to build up your Church in unity and love;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Swithun revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Saint Swithun (second from left) in the second row of saints and martyrs on the Great Screen in Southwark Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford; click on images for full-screen viewing)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

• Patrick Gale A Perfectly Good Man (HarperCollins UK/Fourth Estate, 2012).

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org