Petey
Quakers (members of the Society of Friends) were not the only
Nonconformists to use meeting houses. The National Archives catalogue classifies Quaker records of births, marriages and deaths under RG 6 and other dissenters' registers under RG 4.
As you found, Elizabeth Tiffen's birth is registered in
RG 4/1861, "Sudbury, Great Meeting, Friar Street, and Little or Lower Meeting, Suffolk, Denomination:
Independent: Births and Baptisms" (1707-1837).
The Independents (also known as Congregationalists) are distinguished from the Friends (Quakers) in a brief history of Sudbury on page 574 of
White's 1844 Suffolk directory:
"Here are two
Independent Chapels, one built in 1839, and the other erected in 1822, in lieu of the old Presbyterian Meeting-house, which was built about 1710, by a congregation formed in 1662. The latter has an endowment for the minister and the support of a school. Here is also an old
Friends' Meeting-house, and a Baptist Chapel, erected in 1834."
GENUKI's church history for the Congregational Chapel in Friars Street, Sudbury, states:
"It was founded in 1631. Presbyterian Meeting-house built here about 1710. New one erected before 1800 (Rel[igious] Census 1851). Rebuilt in 1822. Closed by 1966. New building on site."
Friars House, on the site of the demolished chapel in Friars Street, has been marked with a
blue plaque by Sudbury Freemen's Trust (see also Sudbury Freemen's Society: "
The Gainsborough family vault").
The later Independent chapel, founded in 1839, was Trinity Chapel (now Christ Church URC - United Reformed Church) in School Street or School Lane, according to
GENUKI.
David
