Beccles Meeting House as it was in 1744. Photo: Courtesy of Jill Allum.
Eye - 05 May 2017
From digging through records to Friendly memories
A terrier for tales
A thwarted search for the bones of her ancestors left one visitor to Beccles none the wiser. Thankfully help was at hand when a Friend forwarded her message to Jill Allum.
With twenty years of experience as Beccles Meeting’s archivist, Jill promptly rolled up her sleeves and started digging… through records.
She told Eye: ‘The email forwarded to me said that Sian Howell, not a Friend but with an ancestral family of Quakers, has recently visited Beccles from Wales looking for a Quaker ancestor: John Scales, 1713–1770.
‘After five days of searching for his bones, she had gone home disappointed.’
Jill’s quest for Quakers past has seen her rifling through burial records and consulting the curator at the local museum about possible sites.
However, it is the life, rather than the bones, of this Friend that has since captured the imagination of his descendent.
She explains: ‘Sian and I were emailing furiously. We wanted to find out more about John Scales. I knew that he had been a grocer in Beccles and had given £17.2s to build our first Meeting house in 1744, total cost £184.2s.3d.
‘I sent Sian pictures of how Quakers dressed then and what the Quietist period was like.
‘John was a Feoffee (trustee) of the Worlingham Quaker Burial Ground and appears on many lists. He went to Monthly Meeting at Woodbridge on horseback and signs the minutes and the Testimonies. He is also on the Quarterly Meeting list of names.
‘Sian is very pleased with all this and thinks she has a worthy forbear.’
However, the tantalising glimpses of John’s life have piqued Jill and Sian’s interest. ‘The only Quaker Meeting locally then was in Beccles, so he probably had to travel from Lowestoft, eight miles. Can anyone help flesh his life out, please, with little stories of what it was like to be a Quaker then?’
Quakerly manners
It has been 152 years since Abraham Lincoln was shot and fatally wounded on Good Friday. However, this year is only the seventh Good Friday since 1865 that has fallen on the anniversary, 14 April.
In an article in the Church Times on 13 April Rod Garner reflected on the president and his faith:
‘For the greater part of his adult life he [Lincoln] remained detached from organised religion, but would occasionally speak of his family’s roots among the Quakers of Virginia, or address correspondents as “Friend”, in the venerable Quaker manner…
‘When he went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of soldiers, he recorded: “I then and there consecrated myself to Christ.” He argued repeatedly that slavery was against the teachings of Christianity and saw the civil war as a form of divine retribution for the sin of keeping slaves.’
A Friendly memory
The story of cordial bobbies in the second world war recently reached Eye.
Walter Storey, from Pontefract, captured the reminiscences of Mary Rowntree, whose father, Horace England, was once caretaker of the Carlton Hill Meeting House and rooms.
She recalls: ‘Nearer the main road, in front of the building was the original Meeting house, which during the second world war was used by the BBC.
‘Because of this building’s strategic importance it had a police guard. Horace offered the police “hospitality” – a warm, dry place to rest and a cup of tea.
‘The Meeting house was used for meetings by conscientious objectors, some living there, and peace campaigners, and [had] attracted the attention of the “war supporters”.
‘The friendly police were able to offer protection.’
