The history of the Meeting House: The Ship's Hulk... The Hulk... 38 Bridge Street.
Bridge Street, now a cul-de-sac, was the main road from the South Gate into Lynn until London Road was built (1803-1806) so the building that we now know as the Quaker Meeting House stood for centuries on a busy main thoroughfare.
The house is a Grade 2 listed building and when repairs were being done in 2009 the outside rendering was removed. Underneath, the archaeologist who visited the site dated the bricks and mortar and said that the house was probably built of reused materials from St Mary's Carmelite Priory which was demolished after it was dissolved in 1538. A gateway of the Priory is still standing today on Friar's Walk.
By the late sixteenth century South Lynn was involved in ship building on the banks of the River Nar and trading around the North Sea coasts. So a house of this stature could well have been the office, warehouse and accommodation of a merchant, ship-owner or sea captain.
In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries South Lynn was a thriving whaling centre and when the boats returned with their catches after several months in the waters around Greenland, the stench of boiling whale blubber would have made the area an unfashionable place to live; so possibly it was then that the building became an inn and lodging house for seamen. In 1736 it was known as Ships Hulk.
By the nineteenth century it was just called The Hulk and it survived the bombing in World War II when 16 people were killed in houses in the immediate area.It closed as a public house in 1970.
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in King's Lynn bought the house in 1986, since when it has been used as a Quaker Meeting House and as a venue hired by organisations in the town. However, the stained glass windows with the words "Bar Parlour" and "Smoke Room" are reminders of its past.
The house is a Grade 2 listed building and when repairs were being done in 2009 the outside rendering was removed. Underneath, the archaeologist who visited the site dated the bricks and mortar and said that the house was probably built of reused materials from St Mary's Carmelite Priory which was demolished after it was dissolved in 1538. A gateway of the Priory is still standing today on Friar's Walk.
By the late sixteenth century South Lynn was involved in ship building on the banks of the River Nar and trading around the North Sea coasts. So a house of this stature could well have been the office, warehouse and accommodation of a merchant, ship-owner or sea captain.
In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries South Lynn was a thriving whaling centre and when the boats returned with their catches after several months in the waters around Greenland, the stench of boiling whale blubber would have made the area an unfashionable place to live; so possibly it was then that the building became an inn and lodging house for seamen. In 1736 it was known as Ships Hulk.
By the nineteenth century it was just called The Hulk and it survived the bombing in World War II when 16 people were killed in houses in the immediate area.It closed as a public house in 1970.
The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in King's Lynn bought the house in 1986, since when it has been used as a Quaker Meeting House and as a venue hired by organisations in the town. However, the stained glass windows with the words "Bar Parlour" and "Smoke Room" are reminders of its past.