‘We were at David Austin Roses yesterday and this caught my eye… it is cheering and beautiful! It lifts up our hearts!’ Photo: courtesy of Anne Ullathorne
Eye - 21 June 2024
From Married in a Meeting house to A rose by any other name…
Married in a Meeting house
Mention of a Quaker Meeting house caught the attention of Gill Sewell, the editor of the Friends Quarterly, during an episode of Great Lives on BBC Radio 4 on 13 May.
Rachel MacRobert née Workman was born in the United States of America in 1884 and moved to the UK to study geology. She became one of the first female fellows of the Geological Society of London in 1919.
The programme explores her life, the loss of her sons, and her legacy – including the MacRobert Award, which inspired doctor Hayaatun Sillem to explore her story.
Her independent nature was evident throughout the episode, seen in her studies, her approach to marriage, and in anecdotes such as refusing to attend her husband’s knighting ceremony, saying ‘I will bow to no man’.
Around twelve minutes into the episode the venue of her wedding comes into the conversation – as she negotiated her husband down from a full church service to a Quaker Meeting house when they wed in 1911. Hear about this ‘charmingly volcanic’ character here: https://bit.ly/RachelMacRobert
A rose by any other name…
…probably wouldn’t appear in Eye!
Anne Ullathorne, of Central England Quakers, spotted something of interest to Friendly readers: ‘We were at David Austin Roses yesterday and this caught my eye… it is cheering and beautiful! It lifts up our hearts!’
The Ausquaker rose’s apricot-hued blooms are also known as the Dame Judi Dench rose.
First introduced to the commercial market in 2017 by breeder David C H Austin, the ‘Ausquaker’ took eight years to develop, as Eye discovered on the helpmefind.com website, which has an impressively detailed listing of roses, clematis and peonies.
The Ausquaker listing on the site tells of how the rose’s origins stem from the pairing of two unnamed seedlings. It outlines the increasing yields in subsequent years, before a patent was applied for in 2016.
Glimmers
What has made you smile this week?
Well-loved phrases
Eye invites you to contemplate well-loved phrases from Quaker texts by picking up a pen or pencil and colouring, doodling… whatever moves you! This week, the phrase is from Quaker faith & practice 27.43.
