Friends Meeting House / Free Library / Jesus Lane Sunday School

History of Friends Meeting House

1650s Quakers first held meetings in Jesus Lane.

1777 The oldest part of the current building  dates from this year.

1808 Joseph Lancaster, a member of the Society of Friends, lectured in the Town Hall on Public Elementary Education. The disused Friends Meeting House was set up but after ten years , new premises were needed and the school at Castle End was built.

1827 The building started use for the Jesus Lane Sunday School. In 1833 this school moved to the King Street Day School (later Paradise Street). A n account of how Rev William Leeke founded the school in 1827 can be found in Down Your Street (CWN 5 Nov 1981).

1855 The building was let to the Corporation to accommodate the newly-formed Borough Free Library under John Pink. There were about 1,200 books for consultation in the reading room. Three years later a Lending Library was set up. In 1862 the library was moved to Wheeler Street, attached to the Guildhall.

The Old Free Library of Cambridge, from Leaflets of Local Lore by Urbs Camboritum (Cambs Collection)

1894 A B Gray recounts that in 1894 new foundations were being excavated on the site. A number of human skeletons were unearthed in which a learned anatomist became interested and pronounced that they must belong to some prehistoric tribe. He was then told that there was a Quaker burial ground on the site.

Jesus Lane, 1894 (Cambridgeshire Collection)

1913 Park Street

James Bowgen, custodian

1963

Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane, 1963

1972

Friends Meeting House, Jesus Lane (MoC 135/72)