---
title: "Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House"
description: "Located in Ipswich, Suffolk. Built 1699–1700; restored 1900 and later. Grade I. Late 17th-century dissenting meeting house style."
category: "Church"
tags: ["Church","Unitarian Church","Suffolk","Ipswich","Grade I","Timber Frame","Joseph Clark"]
canonical: "https://thebritishgazette.com/post/ipswich-unitarian-meeting-house-ipswich"
pubDate: "2026-09-06T01:53:06.542Z"
dateModified: "2026-09-08T00:33:58.769Z"
location: "Ipswich, Suffolk"
country: "England"
county: "Suffolk"
town: "Ipswich"
address: "Friars Street, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP1 1TG"
postcode: "IP1 1TG"
built: "1699–1700; restored 1900 and later"
architect: "Joseph Clark of Ipswich (house carpenter); 1900 restoration by Ronald P Jones"
denomination: "Unitarian Church"
grade: "I"
style: "Late 17th-century dissenting meeting house"
materials: "Timber frame with plastered walls; tiled double-pitched roof"
website: "http://www.unitarianipswich.com/"
openingHours: "The building is open between May and September from 12noon to 4pm every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday."
listEntryUrl: "https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1037739"
gridReference: "TM 161 443"
accessNotes: "Accessible toilets in church. Level access to the main areas"
---

# Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House

The Unitarian Meeting House on Friars Street, Ipswich, is a Grade I timber-framed dissenting chapel of 1699–1700, among the least altered purpose-built meeting houses of its date in England.

## Overview

Historic England lists a very fine seventeenth-century meeting house, opened in 1700 for a congregation founded in 1672, square in plan with plastered walls, two storeys and a tiled double-pitched roof. The upper windows light a gallery on three sides. North and east fronts have mullioned-and-transomed casements with leaded lights and eight-panel doors in stucco architraves with modillioned pediments; oval windows with spider-web leading sit above the north doors. The interior retains a panelled gallery, original box pews, a carved three-decker pulpit (traditionally associated with Grinling Gibbons) and a brass chandelier.

The congregation's own history records a contract of 5 August 1699 with Ipswich house carpenter Joseph Clark for a building sixty by fifty feet, with a double roof on four columns, at £256 14s 6d plus £96 for galleries. The opening service was held on 26 April 1700. Ronald P. Jones directed a restoration in 1900. Later fabric works include 1930, 1954, 1975 and a rolling programme from 1988; a major repair completed in 2021 removed unsympathetic steel and cement and re-rendered in lime. The meeting house is open on selected days from May to September.

## Further Information

- [Historic England list entry 1037739](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1037739)
- [Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House: building history](https://unitarianipswich.com/building/)
- [Ipswich Unitarians](http://www.unitarianipswich.com/)