Below is a great 3-minute clip by David Burnell on the story of our meeting house for the Open House festival.
English Heritage Survey Results
Statement of Significance
An early nineteenth-century meeting house, with a little-altered large meeting room, set within a garden which forms part of a now-reduced burial ground. Overall this is a meeting house of high significance.
Evidential value
The meeting house was built in 1817 and retains much of its original character and fabric, including hidden elements such as the king-post roof. Features such as the full-height shutters and the fixed seating in the elders’ stand are important survivals, evocative of Quaker tradition and worship. In the garden are several reset historic headstones. The building suffered fire damage in 1988, with some loss to its evidential value, but this nevertheless remains high.
Historical value
This is one of the oldest meeting houses in Greater London, and has been in continuous use since 1817. It is the successor to earlier meeting houses built in 1691 and 1755. It is of high historical value.
Aesthetic value
The meeting house is externally little altered and has a plain late Georgian character, with notable details and features such as the fine external brickwork detailing and joinery. Inside, the shutters and other high quality fixed furnishings in the large meeting room contribute to the aesthetic value of the building. It stands within a small and well-maintained garden, with a contemporary (but altered) brick boundary wall, and is an oasis of calm in an area which has seen much large-scale post-war rebuilding. Additions of 1962 have not significantly reduced the aesthetic value of the building, which is high.
Communal value
The meeting house is widely used by local groups as well as Friends, and is of high communal value.
George Fox epistle To the People of Uxbridge printed 1659
The George Inn, first home of Uxbridge Quakers late 1600s
The George Inn
The George Inn features strongly in the first century of the Quakers in Uxbridge. It was there that people met in the dangerous days when holding a meeting for worship might make you liable for heavy fines or to go to prison. It was owned by Quakers, which seems incongruous now, when some Quakers are associated with abstinence or moderation in alcohol.
The first Quaker marriage took place at the George Inn, between Thomas Wright and Mary Redding, in 1677. The innkeeper Richard Richardson didn’t confess until another 20 years that he had actually married in front of a priest, because his wife’s family were afraid that a Quaker marriage might not be legal.
Uxbridge had a huge number of pubs in the 17th and 18th centuries, and was associated with milling and brewing.
For more details - broken down by century there are histories written by one of our members linked in the menu above.