19th century former Friends Meeting House at Stoneham Road, Coggeshall (EHER 80561)

The original meeting house was replaced in 1877 by a smaller building on the same site.

July 2014. Building survey. The original meeting house was replaced in 1877 by a smaller building on the same site. The new meeting house seated about 120 in two equally-sized chambers, which were originally separated by ‘a single large sash shutter’. A small addition was built at the southwest corner of the building, probably (judging from its appearance) in the 1950s. The meeting house closed in 1965 and is now leased to the county council and used as a public library. The meeting house is a small, chapel-like building, in its brick functional way reminiscent of some railway architecture. It is built of stock brick laid in English garden wall bond (three courses of stretchers for each course of headers). The shallow gabled roof is covered with slates. The entrance faces Stoneham Street and has a central round-arched entrance with plain semi-circular fanlight. A projecting brick band runs around the building, on which sit the sills of the windows; one on either side of the main entrance and four on the north side. The window surrounds have roll-moulded brick closers. On the south side is a projecting side entrance with catslide roof and a door similarly detailed to that at the main entrance. Two windows are placed to the east of this and one to the west, the latter now subsumed within a later – probably 1950s – single storey, flat-roofed addition, built of fairly closely matching brickwork. The interior is a single volume space, originally with a partition at the middle. The side entrance (now disused) allowed independent access to each of these spaces. The interior is now fitted out as a public library, with white painted plaster walls and a suspended ceiling. There is a matchboard perimeter dado and the elders’ stand survives at the far end. <1>