Generally, Quakers believe that
meeting for worship can occur in any place - not just in a designated meeting house. Quakers have quoted to support this: "Where two or three meet together in my name, there [is God] in the midst of them."In 1662,
John Bowne was arrested by
Peter Stuyvesant for holding Quaker worship at
his 1661 house in
Flushing, Queens, then part of
New Netherland. Bowne was deported to Holland and placed before a panel from the
Dutch West India Company. The
Hertford Meeting House is located in 48 Railway Street, Hertford, East Hertfordshire. This is the oldest Quaker building in the world, still in use for worship meetings. It was thrice visited by Quaker founder
George Fox. This shows that holding meeting for worship at home was common in areas where a meeting house was not available. In 1682, the
Third Haven Meeting House in
Talbot County, Maryland was built. This is considered the oldest surviving Friends meeting house in America. Some Friends meeting houses were adapted from existing structures, but most were purpose-built. The 1675
Brigflatts Meeting House in
Cumbria, England is an example of the latter. The hallmark of a meeting house is extreme simplicity and the absence of any liturgical symbols. More specifically, though, the defining characteristics of the Quaker meetinghouse are simplicity, equality, community, and peace. Though never explicitly written or spoken about, these tenets (or "Testimonies") of Quakerism were the basic, and only, guidelines for building a meetinghouse, as was seen through the continuity of the use of Testimonies within meetinghouse design. While meetinghouse design evolved over time to a standardization of the double-cell structure without explicit guidelines for building, the meeting house's reflective architecture revealed a deeper meaning. The meeting house design manifested and enhanced Quaker Testimonies and the cultivation of the Inner Light that was essential to Friends. Quakers easily moved from one place of meeting to another, but when given the opportunity to design and construct their own place of meeting, Friends infused their Testimonies in the planning, design, and construction of the building. in
Maryland, showing the facing benches and the moveable divider typical of 18th and 19th century meetinghouses in the area == Description ==