Friends Meeting House, 21 North Brink, Wisbech

History of the Friends Meeting House

Listed Building

Quakers meeting in Wisbech adapted two thatched cottages on North Brink for a meeting house. Used from 1711, a new purpose-built meeting house was constructed there in 1854 to a design by amateur architect Algernon Peckover (1803-1893). Originally, the single-storey building included the main meeting room to the south side, divided by a shuttered partition from a smaller meeting room to the north, with a gallery over the western entrance hall.

The Peckovers were a wealthy Quaker family, running the Wisbech and Lincolnshire Bank from nearby Bank House (now Peckover House, Grade I). The burial ground to the rear of the meeting house includes burials from the period 1742 to 1948, including 18 members of the Peckover family. As well as Algernon Peckover, these include his daughter Priscilla Hannah Peckover (1833-1931), a noted international peace activist and founder of the Women’s Local Peace Association (the Peace Union) who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Jane Stuart (1654-1742), illegitimate daughter of James II, is also buried here. The headstones in the burial ground are Grade II-listed.

This is the location of the burial of Jane Stuart, daughter of King James II. She had joined the Quakers for which she was jailed but then took refuge in Wisbech. When she died in July 1742, she was buried in the graveyard at the back of the Meeting House.

from Leaflets of Local Lore by Urbs Camboritum (Cambs Collection)

Tales of Old Cambridgeshire, Polly Howat, 1990, contains a chapter, The Royal Recluse, about Jane Stuart. jane, born 1654, had been due to marry but her fiance was killed in a coach accident. It was the after the burial of her fiance that she left London  and went into hiding in Wisbech. She lived a reclusive life and made a living from spinning worsted.

See ‘Wisbech’s Secret Princess’ by Christopher Donald