Four New Chapels

From later in 2025, the four sites - Farfield Quaker Meeting House (West Yorkshire), Coanwood Quaker Meeting House (Northumberland), Cote Baptist Chapel (Oxfordshire), and Biddlestone Roman Catholic Chapel (Northumberland) - will be under the care of the FoFC, ensuring their long-term conservation and public access.

These acquisitions follow a strategic move by the Historic Chapels Trust to find sustainable new custodians for its portfolio of buildings, ahead of the charity closing its operations.

The chapels form part of the biggest single-year acquisition programme in the FoFC's 68-year history. As well as their architectural significance, as the information below illustrates, each building tells remarkable, important stories of faith, resilience, defiance, community and devotion.

We began negotiations with the HCT about three years ago. The HCT provided detailed condition reports and cost estimates from quantity surveyors about the works required, and we made it clear that we could not accept any buildings which had significant repair liabilities -- our finances didn't stretch that far. The HCT was awarded a multi-million-pound grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund which they are using to put all their chapels into good order before dispersing. The three chapels in the north are in very good condition. Cote in Oxfordshire needs more work – FoFC Trustees reviewed this very carefully and decided that we should accept this, as otherwise the chapel would have been marketed for domestic conversion, and we didn’t want to see that happen.

Roger Evans MBE, Chairman of the Friends of Friendless Churches, said:

"We are delighted to work with the Historic Chapels Trust and honoured to be entrusted with the care of these four remarkable places of worship. We look forward to working with the dedicated local supporters at each of the sites, as well as specialist craftspeople to ensure they remain accessible, respected, and beautifully preserved for future generations."

Chris Smith, Chairman of the Historic Chapels Trust, said:

There is not much joy in the sadly inevitable process of closing HCT and finding appropriate new owners for our chapels. However, that these four chapels are to be transferred into the hands of FoFC brings something very close to joy. It certainly brings relief and confidence for the future. Roger Evans once summed up the FoFC collection to me as including “many small, beautiful things in distant fields”. Quite right and these four will fit wonderfully well - even Cote in Oxfordshire is surprisingly isolated - and can count on the gentle, dedicated and imaginative care of FoFC in future.

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The Four Chapels

Farfield Quaker Meeting House, West Yorkshire: A small, simple, but deeply moving meeting house near Addingham, that was built immediately after the Act of Toleration of 1689.
In 2018, Historic England launched A History of England in 100 Places project. Farfield Meeting House was chosen as one of the top ten most important buildings to represent England's extraordinary history of faith and belief.

Coanwood Quaker Meeting House, Northumberland: Built close to Hadrian’s Wall in 1760, the interior of this meeting house is almost unaltered, making it a rare, eloquent survival of a historic layout. The remote setting powerfully evokes the silence of Quaker worship, where the only sound is usually the wind and, in winter, the fast-moving burn nearby.

Cote Baptist Chapel, Oxfordshire: With its curious, truncated, double gable, this Georgian chapel built in golden Cotswold stone is unforgettable. Founded in the early 1700s, the interior retains a full-set of wood-grained box pews, a three-sided gallery, a pulpit with a subtle sunburst pattern the woodwork and a lead-lined full immersion baptismal tank.

Biddlestone Roman Catholic Chapel, Northumberland: This remote Gothic Revival chapel is set in a sweeping landscapes of Northumberland National Park. It has a fascinating, varied history: the chapel is built on the remains of a 14th-century pele tower, was once a clandestine Catholic refuge for the Jacobite-supporting Selby family and has a WWII bomb shelter in the under-croft.