The Meeting House

 Our Meeting House stands on the first land to be bought in Bury St Edmunds by nonconformists.  Situated within the walls of the medieval town, it was purchased for £50 in 1682, only 30 years after George Fox had founded the Quaker movement.

 The present timber frame Grade l listed building and extensive garden and burial ground date from c.1750, though the Margaret Kemp Room is thought to be part of an even older building that the local Quakers used for worship. 

The front wall is faced with 19th century white bricks and has a full Venetian window.  Internally the original Elders' benches remain as does the gallery, which has recently been restored.

The Margaret Kemp Room is named after a Friend who kept the Meeting going in the post-war years of the 1940s, sometimes being the only Quaker attending on a Sunday morning.  Our numbers have grown since then, and we aim now to be an active presence in the community.

In 2007 work commenced on the provision of a new room for community meetings (the Garden Room), new toilets, and a state-of-the-art kitchen, all leading off an entrance hall designed to reflect the importance of light in Quaker belief and thinking.  At the same time, the older rooms had under-floor heating installed - to match the new extension – and were redecorated.  The gallery was re-opened, and a library installed where the old kitchen once was.  A civic opening ceremony of the restored Meeting House took place in October 2008.

The cost of the extension and restoration amounted to £530,000 and this was raised in a little over three years, without recourse to Lottery funding, because of our concern about the effects of gambling.

A more detailed history of the Bury Meeting can be found in Betty Curtayne’s recently revised booklet Quakers in Bury St Edmunds (£3.00), available from the Meeting House.