Darlington’s doors open wide
The renaissance of a Quaker Meeting house
This time last year Darlington Friends’ Meeting House was for sale. Today, its doors are wide open again and it is enjoying a new lease of life.
The Meeting house, rebuilt in its present form in 1846, had become too big for local Friends and too onerous for them to maintain. At the time that Teesdale and Cleveland Area Meeting were considering three offers to purchase the building, an alternative idea was put forward by a not-for-profit local community interest company called D/deaf Development (3D). They offered no money, but practical help in managing the property and its lets.
They proposed that the Meeting house would continue to be used by Friends by small community groups and by 3D for a pilot project. This would provide community support and guidance for people with sensory loss and other needs.
Friends have been involved in a lot of consultation and discernment with the directors of 3D. Now a legal agreement is being drawn up for 3D to manage the Meeting house, and its lets and to deal with minor repairs. The Area Meeting trustees retain control on major repairs and alterations. Since last August, the front doors of Darlington Meeting House – for many years normally closed on weekdays – have been open again Monday to Friday from 10am to 2pm to offer hospitality to whoever chooses to step inside. People now come from Darlington and surrounding towns and villages, to enjoy a cup of coffee or to sit quietly in a safe environment. One of their biggest surprises is discovering that the cost of the freshly ground Fairtrade coffees and tea is 60p a cup. The directors of 3D insist on maintaining this low price to ensure that everyone can afford it. People are free to donate whatever they may feel the coffee is worth over and above the price.
Richard Moriarty is a member of the Iona Community and has held organisational roles at the Abbey on Iona and at a Christian retreat centre in recent years. He is a director of 3D and believes that work and worship are one. Pat Wood, a member of our Area Meeting, and a director of 3D says ‘for me, this is belief in action’.
Marion Law, the clerk of Darlington Local Meeting, said: ‘It is working really well. There are a lot of positives to this project. It will be good for Darlington Meeting, for the town, and for 3D. It has certainly stirred the town up a bit, and we hope it will draw others in, but it is early days yet.’
Darlington Meeting House is now being developed as a Quaker Heritage Centre with a range of display material and literature about Quakers. More people are asking to look round. The Thursday morning Meeting for Worship has moved from the library to the Meeting room because of growing numbers, and people are learning about the active work of Friends in the community today. We hope to develop an inter-active display about the Quaker heritage in Darlington and the surrounding area – 1651 country!
A longer-term aim of 3D is to develop a north-east regional centre for people with sensory loss in the Meeting house. The primary work of 3D is the translation of a wide range of information, which is often inaccessible to people with hearing loss, particularly where British Sign Language, and not English, is their first language.
The aim of 3D within the Meeting house is to develop a place of sanctuary which will provide a holistic approach to mental health and well-being. They intend to provide counselling, training courses, life coaching, and gentle physical exercise. This will include participating in services provided by the various community groups that meet in the Meeting house, such as Tai chi, yoga and dancing.
This work will be supported by the opportunity for spiritual development through daily periods of worship and opportunities to engage with faith issues. In the longer-term, 3D hope to be able to raise funds to equip the Meeting House with modern communication equipment, flat screen monitors, screen phones, Braille machines and a cinema with sub-titles and audio description.
The coffee bar of today is perhaps a reprise of the Quakers’ coffee cart that Darlington Friends had in the 1870s. They founded the Coffee Cart Company of Darlington to sell alcohol-free beverages and cakes in the town centre. The profits from this horse-drawn cart went to charity. Local publicans were not impressed. It took custom from them. The ‘accident’, which happened on 21 July 1877 when a runaway horse-drawn cab collided with the Quaker coffee cart, was established later in court to be no accident at all, but a deliberate act to sabotage the venture. The landlord of The Globe Inn was ordered to pay compensation to the Quakers. I don’t think we will have similar problems this time!
We all hope our collaboration with 3D will be a new lease of life for Darlington Meeting House, the fourth on the site since 1668. We are all aiming to ‘live adventurously’ in the spirit of Advices & Queries 27.
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.