Survey Data

Reg No

14819087


Rating

Regional


Categories of Special Interest

Architectural, Artistic, Historical, Social


Previous Name

Birr Society of Friends' Meeting House


Original Use

Meeting house


In Use As

Masonic lodge/hall


Date

1855 - 1860


Coordinates

205839, 205095


Date Recorded

26/08/2004


Date Updated

--/--/--


Description

Detached single-bay (three-bay deep) double-height gable-fronted Society of Friends' meeting house, built 1858, on an L-shaped plan; three-bay single-storey wing (east). For sale, 1911. Sold, 1913, to accommodate alternative use. Pitched (gable-fronted) slate roof; pitched slate roof (wing), clay ridge tiles, cut-limestone coping to gables on cut-limestone ogee kneelers, and cast-iron rainwater goods on cut-limestone eaves on cut-limestone ogee consoles retaining cast-iron downpipes. Roughcast battered walls on cut-limestone chamfered plinth with cut-limestone quoins to corners. Camber-headed door opening (wing) with three cut-limestone steps, and cut-limestone block-and-start surround having chamfered reveals framing timber boarded double doors having overlight. Camber-headed window openings with cut-limestone surrounds having chamfered reveals framing two-over-two timber sash windows having horizontal glazing bars. Full-height interior with carved timber surrounds to door openings framing timber panelled doors, and dentilated plasterwork cornice to ceiling centred on egg-and-dart-detailed decorative plasterwork ceiling roses. Set back from line of street on a corner site with coursed rubble limestone boundary wall to perimeter having hammered or rough hewn limestone soldier course coping.

Appraisal

A meeting house representing an integral component of the mid nineteenth-century built heritage of Birr with the architectural value of the composition, one succeeding '[a] place of worship…for the Society of Friends' off Main Street (Lewis 1837 II, 456), suggested by such attributes as the compact plan form; the feint battered silhouette; the silver-grey limestone dressings demonstrating good quality workmanship; and the high pitched roof. Having been well maintained, the form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, both to the exterior and to the interior, thus upholding the character or integrity of a meeting house making a pleasing visual statement in an urban street scene. NOTE: A date stone records the origins of Saint Brendan's Lodge when Warrant 163 was issued on the 15th June 1747 by Grand Master Sir Marmaduke Wyvill to Worshipful Master William Macoun, Senior Warden Thomas Nethercott and Junior Warden James Armstrong 'to erect a Lodge of Freemasons in the Town of Birr in the King's County' (Lalor Cooke 1875, 89). Meetings were originally held in a number of houses and premises around Birr throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries including Dooly's Hotel (see 14819009). The Society of Friends, facing a decline in their congregation, advertised the sale of their meeting house in 1911. The sale of the meeting house to Saint Brendan's Lodge was completed in November 1913 and, in addition to the sale price of £50, an additional £600 was expended on repairs.