Monument record MDR13484 - Friends' Meeting House (site of), Saltergate, Chesterfield

According to Bulmer's Directory, the Friends' Meeting House, in Saltergate, dates from 1696, two years after the death of George Fox, the founder of the sect. The building was enlarged and faced with brick in 1770, and again enlarged in 1800. Adjoining is a small burial ground, but both here and in the chapel rigid plainness is the leading characteristic. (1) According to Kelly's Directory, the Friends' meeting house, Saltergate, built in 1673 and enlarged and repaired in 1770, has sittings for 70. (2) The first Friends' meeting-house on Saltergate was built in 1696-7 and is described as standing at the north end of a small croft, behind what was probably an earlier cottage. The meeting-house was rebuilt in 1770 and in 1799 a proposal was made to enlarge the building by 3 yards to the east, in 1802 Joseph Storrs submitted his account for this work for £227 7s. 1d. An elevation before alteration and a plan and elevation of the proposed enlargement show the 1770 meeting-house with gables to east and west ends, an entrance at the east end of the south front with a small square window to the left and two taller windows beyond to the principal room. In the enlarged and refronted building a further bay was added to the east with a new doorway at that end of the rebuilt front wall and four uniform windows are shown to the left; the new roof was hipped. In the completed work three windows only were provided at the front, and the gallery stair, designed to be internal, was re-sited in a projection at the back. The meeting-house had yellow sandstone walls of 1770 to the north and west and brickwork of c. 1800 to the south front and the east end; the roof is hipped and covered with stone slates. Three sash windows in the south front had splayed lintels with false voussoir joints and the south doorway had a stone surround incorporating a rectangular glazed panel. In the west wall are two similar windows with plain stone surrounds and two windows of like design in the east wall serve an upper room. The meeting-house was demolished and the site cleared c. 1974; a modern tablet marks its approximate location. (3) There is a Friends' Meeting House situated off Saltergate, with a Burial Ground to the south, on the 1st edition 25" Ordnance Survey map of c. 1880, presumably that referred to by Bulmer in 1895 and Kelly in 1912. (4) Modern maps show the site of this building is now underneath a Multi-storey Car Park. (5)