Friends Meeting House 1888 (MoC257/72)

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.

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.

1913 Park Street

James Bowgen, custodian

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25 September 1937 – Jesus Lane Sunday School recalls its King Street years
A feature marking the continuing work of Jesus Lane Sunday School recalled that the organisation had been founded in 1827 before moving to premises in King Street. For many years local children were taught there by University undergraduates, many of whom later rose to positions of distinction within the Church. In 1868 a larger school was built in Paradise Street, but changing patterns of population after the First World War meant that many families had moved to the suburbs. The Paradise Street building had therefore been sold and a new hall erected in Brooks Road, where it would also serve as a temporary church until a permanent building could be provided.

Source: Mike Petty Archive, Cambridge King Street Scrapbook 1897–1990, Item: 37 09 25.

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1963

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1972