MINUTES OF JULY 2009 MEETING
MINUTES OF THE 21st MEETING OF AYNHO HISTORY SOCIETY HELD AT THE QUAKER MEETING HOUSE, ADDERBURY ON WEDNESDAY 29TH JULY 2009
Present: – Brian Reynolds - Chairman
Peter Cole – Secretary. At least 19 other members and guests attended.
1 Correspondence
The secretary had received no correspondence this month. He said that as Revd. Terry Richards had already given a comprehensive talk to the Society on the Croughton wall paintings, he had not produced any minutes of the meeting held at Croughton Church on 24th June.
2 Chairman’s Report
Brian said that regarding the tunnels, some experts would be coming on Saturday 8th August to carry out initial geophysical work in various areas of the village.
There are two other things going on in Aynho, which may tie in with this. One is that an Aynho Business Community Group has been set up, a getting-together of self-employed people working from home, which now numbers over 40. They want to try to attract people to come to Aynho.
Also the BBC is trying to identify six villages and appoint a champion in each to promote that village nationwide.
Keith McClellan has details of Brackley History Society meetings.
3. The Quaker Meeting House at Adderbury Nick Allen
Brian welcomed Nick Allen to what would be his last talk after 51 years of speaking.
Nick said that he had worked with the Quakers for 12 years, as they wanted someone with experience of running a residential home on their committee for East House, a Quaker residential home.
The Adderbury house was built in 1675 as a Meeting House. Quakers don’t have churches. They believe that everybody has God inside them, and they don’t therefore need a church in which to worship, nor do they need a parson, nor to pay tithes. The house is still just as it was when built, with no lighting and no water. (It had been hoped that a July meeting would have provided a sunny evening for the talk, but on a dark and wet evening, with only five small candles for illumination, it was almost impossible to identify people sitting just a few feet away.)
The fact that they wouldn’t pay tithes, and that they refused to raise their hats to the gentry, wouldn’t take their hats off in church, nor even enter a protestant church upset the Establishment greatly, and they were often persecuted for these matters.
The Quakers came to Banbury soon after 1650. They started to have their own beliefs during the Civil War. They collected quite a large number of people during a short time, including some quite wealthy and influential individuals. A Meeting House was built in Banbury, followed by this one in Adderbury, where at one time 25% of the population were Quakers. This house was built by a wealthy landowner, Bray D’Oyley, who was promptly put into prison for two months for doing so. It was built for just over 160 people, consisting of men downstairs, with ladies in the upstairs gallery.
After the Civil War poverty was one of the great concerns. Many farms had been destroyed during the war, and so there were many displaced and unemployed people about. The Quakers did their best to help such people.
Aynho too had a large number of Quakers, but they didn’t have a Meeting House, as this was almost certainly forbidden by the Cartwright of that time, so they had to meet in Adderbury.
This House has remained as one of the very few, which is still in its original state. It has been solely a Quaker house except for a period during the Second World War, when evacuees were billeted here.
How they managed without any water or light is not known. Nick said that about five years ago he was giving a talk here to a group of people, and an elderly couple held back afterwards, and told him that they had been two of the evacuees. They had used an old table that was always here. George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, had come to open the house originally, and he had sat at this table, so it was rather special. The family had used this table to put hot saucepans on, so a lady, Susan Fanny Buck, rescued it and replaced it temporarily with another one.
There are many records of the persecution of the Quakers. People were required by law to attend an Anglican church and to pay tithes. There were no laid-down limits for sentencing, so one was at the mercy of the magistrate on any one day. An extreme example was of a person who was sentenced to eight and a half years in Oxford prison merely for refusing to promise to go to church. In those days even a short prison sentence was often a death sentence, since they were very damp, and no food was provided, so a person was totally reliant on friends and relatives bringing food all the way from Banbury.
If say a farmer refused to pay his tithes, his farm stock or crops could be seized as he brought them to market. For this reason many Quakers took up trades that required very small tools that could be easily hidden, such as clock makers and violin makers.
This house was built for precisely 102 men on the ground floor, and 60 women above in the gallery.
The Quakers did not accept the names of the days of the week as we do, nor the months, named after Norse or Roman gods. So they called Sunday “1”, and January “1”, in the same manner as most Americans record the date today.
Susan Fanny Buck, who died in 1945, was the last of the old-fashioned Quakers. She always dressed in long black clothes with a white collar, just like the old photos. When the Meeting House closed in 1911, she asked if she could stay and look after it, and worship there all on her own, which she did right up to the date of her death. She is buried right next to the house. Altogether more than 200 people are known to be buried in the grounds of the house.
Among other non-conformists, Quakers were not allowed to attend university. They were thus denied entry to the professions, so they took to becoming bankers, jewellers and producers of food. Both Lloyds and Barclays Banks were started by Quakers, as were Fry’s, Cadburys and Huntley & Palmers. At one time 30,000 people were working in Birmingham’s jewellery quarter.
Locally Gillett’s was a Banbury bank until taken over by Barclays. Banbury had piped water, when the Quakers paid for it, after the Town Council had flatly refused to fund it. Alcan wanted to come to Banbury, but again the Council were not interested. The Quakers realised that this was an opportunity to provide a lot of local employment, so they bought some land and gave it to Alcan for a factory that became a major employer.
In the late 18th century about a thousand people were engaged in producing Banbury plush, a very coarse velvet. This was used primarily for making first stagecoach and then railway seats, as it was very hard-wearing. It was also used for furniture in several royal courts. Gillett’s started off as farmers, then changed over to plush-making in a big way, and made so much money out of this that they became a bank.
In response to questions, Nick said that the building ceased formally to be a place of worship in 1911, but nothing happened for many years. Then the church decided that they needed more burial space, and realised that there was land not being used here. There were not enough Quakers to utilise it all, and eventually It was agreed with the Parish Council that they would maintain the land, with the church being given permission to use a part of it for burials, and in return the Quakers can use the Meeting House four times a year. They have only recently started holding meetings regularly again, and they are very well attended. There are about 15,000 Quakers in the country now, with 50 living in the Banbury area. The Quaker movement started in Yorkshire and Lancashire, and pairs of missionaries were sent round the country. One pair was actually sent to the Vatican to try to convert the Pope! A six-volume book was produced entitled “The Book of Quaker Suffering”, which records that in the first 100 years of the movement, no fewer than 15,000 Quakers died in prison, due to starvation or ill-treatment. The persecution of Quakers and others ceased in 1854, due to the Act of Tolerance, which permitted anyone to worship in any manner they chose, and to go to University.
It is generally thought that the name “Quaker” derives from the fact that in the early days of the movement that they actually shook at meetings, like the later American Shakers.
Brian thanked Nick for his interesting talk.
4. Forthcoming Meetings
August No meeting
September 30th England's Canals - Past & Present Peter Cole
October 6th Iford Manor visit
October 28th A.G.M.
November 27th The Church at Middleton Cheney Bob Hunter
Groups: