Gatesbield
Jo Jaffray reflects on Gatesbield, home of Windermere Meeting and Gatesbield Quaker Housing Association, and its remarkable history
The conversation flowed as we enjoyed a tasty lunch. We were looking through the leaded bay window onto the garden. A nuthatch joined us at the bird feeder. One of my companions told me about the pheasants on her doorstep and, less enthusiastically, another of the deer nibbling her plants. Then the conversation switched to the concert some had been to at the weekend and the price of spectacles at the nearby shops in Windermere. The youngest in the room was eighty-five and the oldest about to celebrate 100 years.
We were in the dining room at Gatesbield Quaker Housing Association, a sheltered housing scheme for older people in the Lake District. I fantasised that in the mid-twentieth century similar conversations might have been heard in the same room between Stanley and Emily Davies and their friends.
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