Eye - 01 February 2013

From squabbling sisters to silent snow

Squabbling sisters

Sibling rivalry can test the most patient parent, but what to do when bricks and mortar feel the twinge?

Hertford Meeting House wrote to Eye, care of Gerald Drewett, with a tale that has been galling its gables:

‘Younger sisters are such a precocious lot, aren’t they? Just look at that Almeley Wootton (11 January). Historic importance? 1672 they say. Well, big sister Hertford is the oldest purpose-built Meeting house in the world still in use; and I date from 1670. Do you want to see my interior? And exterior as well, as little sister flashed both at you…

‘She didn’t say much about her pedigree, did she? Somebody went to Pennsylvania? Hertford citizens crossed the Atlantic in 1633 and founded Hartford, Connecticut. And Hertford Quakers were sentenced to transportation to the colonies in 1664 long before Pennsylvania came into being… There are plenty of Hartfords and Hertfords in the New World.

‘Hertford has had a Quaker Meeting since 1655, when James Nayler arrived. George Fox missed the boat by six months and always found us a rather independent lot. I think he used stronger language than that. And did Charles Lamb sit in her Meeting house and write “…come with me into a Quakers’ Meeting”? He did at Hertford.

‘And, oh yes, my fireplace is bigger!

‘There, I feel much better now, and I do know some say big sisters are always bossy, but who else is going to keep these siblings in their place?’

Jesus Lane Meeting

Towards the end of Meeting

Silent apart from one Advice

The quiet is like snow waiting to slip from a roof

Or drop from a branch

To change form and function

Turn into ice or water

Sink into the earth

And move on.

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