The Quaker Campers on site. Photo: Courtesy of Fiona Leslie.
Eye - 24 August 2018
From camping to suffrage
Canvas, campervans and companionship
About forty Friends and families from across the country recently joined together for fellowship in canvas and campervans in the beautiful coastal town of Cromer at the end of July.
The Quaker campers held open-air all-age Meeting for Worship every morning for those who wished to attend, shared activities, and went on trips to the nearby beach and a circus.
The annual Quaker camp, which ran from 28 July to 4 August, included evenings of voluntary entertainment, and an evening of bring-and-share puddings.
Fiona Leslie, from Frandley and Westminster Meetings, told the Friend: ‘It was my and my daughter’s first time with Quaker campers. We thoroughly enjoyed its welcoming, supportive, sharing and relaxed fellowship, and are very much looking forward to next year’s camp in Derbyshire.’
She described the site at Cromer as ‘a fun-filled, happy and spiritually refreshing place’.
Women’s suffrage on stage
The centenary of some women in Britain gaining the vote prompted Friends in one Meeting to put on a performance.
Jill Allum, of Beccles Meeting, told Eye about an unusual play: ‘Although not Quaker, the Suffragette movement feels very akin to Quaker ideals. Some Beccles Friends have performed a play called A Meeting of Women’s Suffrage Societies in our large Quaker Hall to a group of forty people from the National Women’s Register.
‘Interestingly, the meeting took place in Quaker Hall in 1914. The hall was built in 1909 for Adult School work. You can still see where the stage was for the dignitaries to sit. Our audience were fascinated to see a photo of the hall in 1914, with the stage in readiness.
‘Four of us, including our Green councillor, Elfrede Brambley-Crawshaw, dressed in the style of the day and sat as we would have done in 1914.
‘Elfrede had given us a newspaper cutting from 1914 and asked us to make it into a play. She knows we have done two plays like this successfully over the last two years.
‘I had the task of warming up the audience. Crucially, they all had copies of the play. They laughed and cheered easily and a small loud-voiced group became the hecklers – they had the greatest fun! Then “Dr George Fox”, alias Alan Weyman, taught the “March of the Women”, which was sung rousingly.’
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