Eye - 3 February 2017

From Meeting under the sky to glimpsing the past

Meeting under the sky

The history of a group of eager Friends appears in Tiny Churches by Dixe Wills.

The Friends Meeting House at Dolobran, in Powys, is believed to be the oldest Quaker Meeting house in Wales.

Dixe Wills writes: ‘Amble across the low hills near Pontrobert in mid Wales and you’ll come across what appears to be a brick-built cottage. It certainly doesn’t give the impression of being a church, and that is just as it should be because the Religious Society of Friends – to whom this building belongs – do not think of its places of worship as being churches, hence the designation “Meeting house”…

‘The first Meeting in the new building was held in April 1701. Such was the Friends’ impatience to gather there that this took place even though the structure had no roof.

‘Their eagerness was perhaps spurred by the awareness that their Meeting house was not only a place to gather but also a physical sign that their particular form of Christianity was now recognised by the state.’

Moving memories

A recent episode of Antiques Roadshow, aired on 15 January, marked the preparations for Holocaust Memorial Day by meeting a remarkable group of British survivors.

These survivors were invited to bring along treasured items that helped to relate their experience of the Kindertransport.

Among them was Axel Landmann, a member of Northampton Area Meeting, who spoke about his tiny teddy bear.

In a moving interview he tells of how it was the only toy packed in a small case by his parents. They sent him to safety in England before they died.

Friends can see Axel with his cherished teddy here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04p1szh

In a rare break with the tradition of the programme, no monetary value was placed due to the items’ priceless nature and historical importance.

One-and-a-half million children died in the Holocaust. The Kindertransport rescued around 10,000.

Quakers, alongside many others, were involved in this extraordinary rescue: bringing Jewish and non-Jewish children out of German-occupied Europe, persuading the government to relax immigration requirements to allow the children into Britain, and hosting and supporting them.

Glimpsing the past

A recent historic name change was accompanied by an intriguing historical document.

Beth Allen, clerk of the London Quakers Property Trust, writes: ‘When Six Weeks Meeting trustees met on 12 December 2016, to minute the final transition to London Quakers Property Trust, the Library allowed us to have on the table the original minute book from 1671.’

The book shed light on the first Friends involved in the stewardship of Quaker places of worship in London: ‘On its first leaf is the list of around forty men Friends appointed to Six Weeks Meeting – we think that only men could deal with property matters in those days – and on the facing page, the names of the thirty women appointed to meet with them. It is clear from the minutes that the women took a full part in carrying out the business agreed on.

‘We recognised several well-known names – Ann Stoddart, whose husband captain Amor Stoddart gave the land on which the original Bunhill Fields Meeting House was built; George and Ann Whitehead; Frances and Patience Camfield, who started the Camfield Trust; William Mead, who was tried along with William Penn in a landmark trial; Gilbert Latey, the tailor who gave up selling ribbons for the sake of simplicity; and many more. We were thrilled to see this link with our predecessors.’

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