Builder at work. Photo: Courtesy Thirsk Meeting.
Built to scale: Geof Sewell on renovations at Thirsk
‘The job has just been completed.’
Covid was a terrible shock to Meetings like ours, in small market towns with old buildings and an aging demographic. Our Meeting house needed serious building work, and we moved to a nearby centre for wellbeing and spirituality for so long that local people assumed we had closed. Just over a year ago, Thirsk Meeting appealed for funds. Our Grade 2-listed cottage was cold and damp; the kitchen was in a poor state; the stairs were too steep; and the windows needed specialist work. The nineteenth-century toilet extension had to be demolished. After six months of building work, we were able to return to our much-loved building in June. The job has just been completed, and we would like to thank all Friends who contributed so generously.
The work was not all plain sailing. Covid delayed work on three York Area Meeting building projects, which were also subject to trade inflation. As a result, our Area Meeting Property Fund became severely depleted. Thirsk’s target was £37,000 – the difference between our original bid and the final tender, and we slightly exceeded this.
Eventually the factors that prompted such generosity became clear. Firstly, our Meeting house deeds are among the oldest in the world. They date to 1647, five years before George Fox joined a Seekers’ meeting on Firbank Fell, and had his foundational vision of a gathered people. The term ‘Quaker’ was not used until 1652. Arrested for blasphemy, Fox told the bench to ‘Tremble at the word of the Lord’, to which the magistrate replied that the only ‘quaker’ in court was him. Meanwhile, Yorkshire dissenters like Thomas Pratt of Thirsk were purchasing land all over the North Yorkshire Moors and the surrounding market towns.
Secondly, the average number of attenders at our Meetings for Worship has recently grown; the figure is now at its highest for 100 years. One reason for this is the way Roger Tuckett challenged us with his concern about autism exclusion, contributing to our spiritual growth. He also helped establish the weekly ‘Warm Welcome’ at York Friargate for the neurodivergent community, inspiring a small Thirsk group as regular supporters.
Thirdly, Thirsk Friends have been involved in a local ecumenical project to settle an Afghan refugee family on the Home Office’s Pathway Two, teaching the teenage son functional literacy, providing work experience, and offering English conversation.
Fourthly, our garden has been transformed. An open day last June attracted fifty mostly non-Quaker visitors and was supported by twenty Thirsk Friends. In the afternoon, we had a talk about the history of Quaker activism in Thirsk, covering the Hall family’s contribution to the Quakerspeisungen (food support for German families after world war one) and the Kindertransport; and the more recent work in Kabul and Mozambique.
Our testimony to equality and to the inner life of every person expresses far more than the fabric of our building, but it would be more difficult to achieve without it.
