Ifield Friends Meeting House

The Ifield Friends Meeting House is a Friends meeting house in the Ifield neighbourhood of Crawley, a town and borough in West Sussex, England. Built in 1676 and used continuously since then by the Quaker community for worship, it is one of the oldest purpose-built Friends meeting houses in the world. It is classified by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building, a status given to buildings of "exceptional interest" and national importance. An adjoining 15th-century cottage is listed separately at Grade II*, and a mounting block in front of the buildings also has a separate listing at Grade II. Together, these structures represent three of the 100 listed buildings and structures in Crawley.
The Ifield area has a long history of Protestant Nonconformism and Dissent. As early as 1655, George Fox—one of the founders of the Religious Society of Friends—and a Quaker preacher, Alexander Parker, held meetings and preached at a private house in the village. Meetings became more regular in the next two decades, but were still held in parishioners' houses. There were strong feelings both in favour of and against the growing Quaker community: the vicar of St Margaret's Church between 1667 and 1679, Henry Halliwell, was strongly opposed to Nonconformism and preached and wrote against it, whereas a protest in the church in 1658 by a parishioner sympathetic to Quaker beliefs was allowed to continue without interruption. William Penn lived nearby before leaving England for America and founding Pennsylvania; he had links with the local Quaker community and the meeting house in their early days, and clashed with Henry Halliwell. In response to Penn's 1673 treatise entitled Wisdom Justified of her Children from Calumny of Henry Halliwell, Halliwell wrote a piece called Impertinent Cavils of William Penn.

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