Quaker Meeting House, Mere

There was an Independent meeting in Mere between 1705 and 1707, which may have been a Quaker one, but the first Quaker mentioned is in 1709. There then seem to have been no Quakers until 1853 when a small group settled here. They included a chemist, a printer and a solicitor and they interested themselves in social work in the town. Meetings were held from 1856. In 1863 a meeting house was built by J. Farley Rutter as the northern part of the Lecture Hall, pictured here. There was a Temperance Hall behind this, which was used for meetings of the Mere Temperance Society, Mere Band of Hope, and for concerts, Methodist rallies and Liberal party meetings. With the increasing amount of motorised traffic the meeting room on the street became too noisy and from 1928 the Small Lecture Theatre was used as the meeing house. The Friends were still meeting here in the 1960s.