Friends open doors
Numerous Meeting houses opened their doors for Heritage Open Days
More than forty Meeting houses opened to the public during Heritage Open Days, from 8-11 September.
The Meeting houses taking part included Sunderland, a former home built approximately a century ago that has both Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau features, and Kingston Quaker Centre, which opened in 2014 and last year won joint first prize for 2015 in the ACE/RIBA competition in the Religious Architecture category.
A number of older Meeting houses also welcomed visitors, among them High Flatts, the 300-year-old Crawshawbooth Meeting House in Lancashire and Cirencester.
Several Meetings organised activities. Hitchin Friends offered tours of their Meeting house and Brant Broughton held a display of ways to live more simply and in harmony with nature.
In addition to Meetings, a number of other buildings associated with Friends were open, including Peckover House in Wisbech, built by a Quaker banking family, and Bensham Grove Community Centre, the family home of nineteenth to twentieth century Quaker philanthropist and solicitor Robert Spence Watson.
Friends House, London, also opened its doors to the public during Heritage Open Weekend.
