Many Friends will have seen the BBC1 Antiques Roadshow in early March and may have been interested in the piece about Gandhi. Gandhi visited Lancashire at the time of the Round Table Conference in 1931 in London regarding India’s independence, as a result of an invitation from a group of mill owners, some of whom were Quakers and one of whom was my father, Percy Davies. It was hoped that Gandhi would be sympathetic about the situation of the many unemployed mill workers there following the Indian embargo on cotton goods being sent to India. My niece, Judy, and her daughter Lucy, took a number of documents relating to this time to the Antiques Roadshow, including photographs taken at the time, showing my parents, Percy and Kathleen Davies, with Gandhi (see above).
My father and his brothers, Stanley and Willy, inherited the two Darwen mills, Greenfield and Waterfield, and Gandhi stayed in Spring Vale Garden Village, which had been built for the mill workers and their families.

After visiting several parts of Lancashire and meeting many mill owners and workers, some employed and some unemployed, Gandhi accepted an invitation from my parents to spend the weekend with them at Heys Farm on the boarders of Lancashire and Yorkshire with a view of Pendle Hill. The photographs of Gandhi with my parents relate to this period.

Originally, my father had bought the farm as a country base for the Blackburn Adult School to spend weekends in study and fellowship. Just before the first world war my father extended the farmhouse to include a family home. This house eventually became our much loved home during all the long school holidays. Over the front door was carved a quotation from George Fox: ‘Honouring all men is reaching that of God in Every Man’.

With my three brothers and sister, I was very fortunate to be able to mix with the guests and to get to know many varied people both as a child and a teenager. It was here that I met my future husband, Fred Adams. We were later to marry from Heys Farm with the wedding at Sawley Meeting House.

It was here that Gandhi stayed for two nights, sleeping in my brother’s bedroom while he was away at school. A letter thanking my parents for their hospitality was shown and read in the Antiques Roadshow. In the letter he refers to ‘the peace and beauty of the Sabbath’ while staying there.