Quaker Meeting House, Market Lavington

There was a strong Quaker influence in the village by the 1650s and this continued for for several generations with three or four families as the mainstay of the Friends. These included the Selfe, Gye and Axford families. A meeting had been established by 1656 and the Friends were persecuted by the authorities from around 1660. Members of the Selfe family were imprisoned along with Edward Gye and John Smith. This continued into the 1670s. They continued meeting through the latter 17th century and the 24 dissenters recorded in 1676 were probably all Quakers. It was a fairly small group of families which, in c.1680, formed the Lavington Monthly Meeting, which continued until 1775. A meeting house, on the north side of the High Street and at a right angle to the road, measuring 33 feet by 22 feet, was built in 1716, but by the mid 18th century Quakerism was in decline throughout Wiltshire and Market Lavington felt the effect of this. By 1790 there were only three Quakers in the parish and by 1799 this was reduced to one. The meeting house, with its small graveyard was sold and in 1809 was taken over by the Congregationalists, who enlarged it, using it first as a chapel and later, after 1892, as a schoolroom.