Opening a Window
and beginning to make connections
For my first post in Quaker Connections I want to look at the logo I am using - an open window - and talk about my reasons for choosing it.
My aim in these posts is to try to open some windows and look through them in both directions - from outside back to the past and from inside forward to the future.
My more stylised header could show any window but my main logo is based on a photograph I took in Farfield meeting house, near Addingham in Yorkshire. The small Quaker community at Farfield was given land for a burial ground by the local Quaker lord of the manor, Anthony Myers, in 1666. Following the passing of the Act of Toleration in 1689, which allowed most Protestant dissenters to worship publicly in England, Myers gave further land, adjacent to the burial ground, and built a meeting house.
The building at Farfield is very much that original structure, simply built in a vernacular style similar to a Yorkshire stone cottage of the time. Meeting was kept here from 1698 until around 1816 when numbers fell and it was removed to a rented room in Addingham.
It was owned by Quakers until the 1950s when it was considered to be ‘of little historical interest’ and was sold on the open market. It could easily have been turned into a cottage, as was the similar meeting house at Askwith, lower down Wharfedale. However it was bought by a group of four Quakers who wished to retain it in its near-original state. They preserved the interior and put the building to use for a time as an artist’s studio. Their ownership continued until, as time went on, they realised that their solution could not be a permanent one. In 1994 the building was taken over, as their first property, by the Historic Chapels Trust and in 2024 it came under the care of the Friends of Friendless Churches.
Quakers in Britain at the moment are engaged in a debate about whether they should retain their meeting houses, both historic and more modern. Some Friends see them as a drain on our limited resources while others agree that having a base of some kind in a town or city, rather than a rented room for only one day a week, can be an asset and help to grow community. Each meeting must come to the decision that is right for them and my own meeting in Skipton, not far from Farfield, has just decided, after years of deep deliberation, that we are being led to stay in our historic premises and to put the energy which has been released by that decision into making ourselves more visible and developing more links to our community.
The story of Farfield reflects both sides of this argument. The decision to move out and then to sell the building was a rational one and the four friends who ‘saved’ it might be seen as succumbing to a romantic gesture. However the building remained and has been looked after on a day to day basis by a group of local people, including Friends from different Quaker groupings who might otherwise not have had contact with each other.
It is still a Quaker meeting house, although not a Quaker meeting. For some years a meeting for worship has been held once a month from April to October (as Farfield has no modern lighting or heating) and this continues to attract a variety of Friends, including myself. The building is generally open during the day and the visitors’ book attests to the many people, often walkers on the Dales Way that runs alongside, who have stopped for a while and value the peaceful atmosphere of the place.
Using the windows of Farfield for my Quaker Connections logo reminds me that the past can inform the present and show different ways forward into the future. I look forward to writing more and hearing your reactions.
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