Eye - 15 January 2016

A tale of ships, poetry and smooth-sailing

by Eye 15th January 2016

The banker and the two-masted schooner

Prompted by a painting of a ship, Woodbridge Friends set sail to find out more about an eighteenth-century Quaker poet from their town.

Local Friend Jeremy Greenwood wrote to Eye to tell the tale: ‘After an interval of nearly seventy-five years, Quakers started a regular Meeting for Worship in Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 2009. From April 2011 Meetings have been held weekly in Shire Hall on Market Hill, Woodbridge.’

A visitor at one of the first Meetings there noticed a painting hanging above the gathered Friends. It featured a two-masted ship named Bernard Barton.