Quakers & rude boys: former Friends' Meeting House, Holyhead Road, Coventry

Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 12 Jun 2021

The meeting house on Holyhead Road was built in 1897 to a design by Charles Smith, at a time when the Quaker meeting in Coventry was growing and active in mission. It was the third Quaker meeting house that the city had known. The first had been a barn on a plot of land in nearby Hill Street, which was purchased by Quakers in 1668 as a burial ground (the modern meeting house, built in 1953, stands on the same plot, still in Quaker ownership). The second, which no longer exists, stood on Vicars Lane and was in use from 1689 until 1897. By the 1940s the Quaker meeting had become too small to support the Holyhead Road building, which in more recent times has housed a variety of youth, community and arts organisations. https://heritage.quaker.org.uk/files/Coventry%20LM.pdf A plaque on the building (visible above the ramp) recalls its role as a rehearsal space for the emerging reggae and ska music scene in Coventry in the 1970s, which was to evolve into the city's distinctive 2-tone sound. Charley Anderson, later guitarist with The Selecter, played here and also worked at the centre as a youth worker. https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/whats-on/music-nightlife-news/lower-holyhead-road-building-crucial-11498284

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