Quakers and Their Meeting Houses by Chris Skidmore (review)

Reviewed by: Quakers and Their Meeting Houses by Chris Skidmore Seth Hinshaw Quakers and Their Meeting Houses. By Chris Skidmore. Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press, 2021. x + 176 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. Hardcover $82.50. Chris Skidmore’s new book is a welcomed addition to the growing number of works documenting the history of the design of Friends meeting houses over the past 350 years. The book presents a much-needed overview of the flow of design aesthetics employed by British Friends over the centuries, and its color illustrations help enliven Skidmore’s narrative with both exterior and interior photographs. Skidmore’s book takes its place among a set of just ten previous works on this topic. The book is based on a recent inventory of British Friends meeting houses (FMHs). The inventory generated information that allowed Skidmore to draw conclusions about changes in the Quaker approach to design over the centuries. One of his primary findings is that shifts in design materialized early in each new century. He begins with the FMHs of the period 1650 to 1715, a period of experimentation with some antecedents in nonconformist religious architecture. The next period considers FMHs from the period 1715 to 1815; this chapter contains his shortest analysis of the four architectural periods. Next is the “turbulent century” from 1815 to 1915 that was characterized by the emergence of divergent sub-groups and the introduction of the hiring of architects who [End Page 63] brought their stylistic approaches to design. In the final period beginning in 1915, FMH design revolves around a new approach to the configuration of worship space. Some differences between the approach to the design of FMHs in Britain and in North America become apparent. Perhaps because site constraints were more pronounced in England, several FMHs were designed with a trapezoidal shape, whereas in the mostly undeveloped North America, FMHs were overwhelmingly rectangular in plan until the twentieth century. The use of architects to design FMHs began in Britain decades earlier than in North America, with an early English Quaker architect named William Alexander writing a book about FMH design in 1820. The introduction of the term “ministers’ stand” in England likely traces back to the influence of architects, as the earlier term “ministers’ gallery” (appearing in graphics on pages 56 and 67) was retained in North America. British Friends used the term stables for the open structures that accommodated horses, a term preferable to the more ambiguous American term sheds. Readers who recall David Butler’s two-volume work The Quaker Meeting Houses of Britain (Friends Historical Society 1999) and his later book The Quaker Meeting Houses of Ireland (Irish Friends Historical Committee, 2004) will see some similarities and differences with Skidmore’s work. Butler attempted to provide information on every known FMH, illustrated by hundreds of remarkable sketches of exteriors and interiors. Butler included a short section entitled “The Premises” outlining some of his initial conclusions about FMH design. Skidmore’s book fleshes out this section and adds information on twentieth-century meeting houses. In his four primary chapters, Skidmore identifies typical examples of design from each period, rather than discussing every individual FMH as Butler did. Butler was one of four scholars who produced typologies of FMH design in the 1990s during a period of increased interest in the topic. In 2012, I wove the best threads and insights of the four competing typologies into an improved composite published in the article “The Architectural Genealogy of the Yonge Friends Meeting House” (Canadian Quaker History Journal 2012, pp. 16–49). This article resolved discrepancies among the four earlier typologies and incorporated new information to establish a framework for understanding FMH design in North America prior to the (American) Civil War. Skidmore generally avoids labels for building types, which has some advantages. These labels [End Page 64] carry some convenience when they are descriptive, informative, and inclusive; the label “Akron Plan” conjures a mental image of the distinctive exterior and interior features of that building type without requiring two or three sentences to explain its distinguishing characteristics when the type is mentioned. Architectural historians in general have found it difficult to discuss the mystical aspects...

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