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).
