Alloway Friends


The authoritative source on early churches of New Jersey About this site We've created a database and photographic inventory on more than half the 18th & 19th century churches in the state and add to it each month. We welcome and solicit all contributions and suggestions from our visitors. *How to use this site* Respond to readers' queries Consult the database Annotate the database Upload a photo Suggest a church for inclusion Glossary List of churches, by county Photographic notes Links to related sites	*Photographic Inventory* Alloways Creek Friends Hancock Bridge, Lower Alloway's Creek Township, Salem County This is also known as the Hancock's Bridge meetinghouse. Here is the NJDEP writeup on the building: The Alloways Creek Friends Meetinghouse, constructed in 1756, was the third meetinghouse constructed for the Alloways Creek Friends. The original form of this meetinghouse, a one story, single-cell building, was a common form for small Friends Meetings in the Delaware Valley from the late seventeenth through the mid-eighteenth centuries. The construction of a major addition in 1784, along with alterations to the original building, converted the meetinghouse into a two-story, two-cell form that quickly dominated Quaker meetinghouse design in the second half of the eighteenth century. While new meetinghouses constructed during the period were built with equal-sized rooms, reflecting contemporary thought on space arrangement for worship and business meetings, the Alloways Creek Friends Meetinghouse retained a slight discrepancy in the size between the two rooms, maintaining the distinction between the main worship room/men's business meeting room and the women's business meeting room found in the earlier generation of meetinghouses. Typical Quaker meetinghouse elements exhibited by the Alloways Creek Friends Meetinghouse include its plain, rectangular brick form with a side gable roof, covered entrances, unadorned interior, facing bench platforms, a U-shaped gallery and a movable partition that allowed joint worship services and separate business meetings.
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