The Quaker Meeting House

The Quaker movement, based largely on the writing and preaching of George Fox, had its roots in Lancashire where a number of religious free thinkers formed the Religious Society of Friends in 1647. They rejected the need for churches, rituals, holy days or sacraments, believing that religion should be something one lived and acted out every day, by seeing all people as deserving of equal treatment and respect. Inevitably this brought them into conflict with both the established church and the state, and when George Fox was imprisoned in 1650 he recorded in his diary that Mr Justice Bennet of Derby had called them Quakers, "as they should tremble at the word of God". Despite persecution increasing after 1660 when Charles II re-established the Church of England, and required oaths of allegiance which Quakers refused to give on principle, it is estimated that by 1680 the movement had 60,000 members. Nine years later the Act of Toleration meant that Quakers were finally able to meet and follow their beliefs without fear of persecution.

As early as 1654 there were Quakers recorded in Norwich, and by 1700 there were Meeting Houses at Diss and Tivetshall. There may have been earlier local meetings of Quakers but Tasburgh's Meeting House was established on its current site in 1707 when Robert Jarmyn acquired buildings and land off Fairstead Lane and transferred them to trustees. That same year at a meeting in Tivetshall it was agreed that the Hempnall meeting should move to Tasburgh. Records show that among a succession of trustees were some prominent local landowners, including five members of the Hart family and Thomas Mildred of Tasburgh Lodge (Hall). A survey of the present building in 1980 showed evidence of the original building, with narrow 2 inch "tudor" brickwork, having been substantially altered with later red bricks which would support a contemporary report that it had been enlarged to seat 350 people. We know that the building was thatched because in 1768 Charles Hart of Hapton Hall received a bill for thatching at the Meeting House, but this may only have been a temporary fix because in March 1773 a subscription list was opened for repairs to the Tasburgh Meeting House and the house belonging with it, indicating that there was someone in residence looking after the site. That year Charles Hart as trustee was billed almost £30 for "Coal bricks" and £200 for bricklayers and carpenters work, large sums in those days, and again that work was seemingly reflected in the 1980 survey which found an obvious straight joint in the west wall with the northern extension being of small, hard dark coloured bricks, which reflect the reference to coal bricks.

Quaker communities maintained their own records of births, marriages and deaths separate from Parish Registers, and decided on their own rules. At a local meeting it 1717 it was agreed that there should be no gravestones but at some point this must have been overturned because an estate agent's description of the property in 1992 referred to the patio as having been laid using old gravestones. Tasburgh's Quakers also decided to use a different system for naming the days and months so as to avoid names derived from pagan gods, such as Thursday (Thor) and March (Mars), both gods of war, something that Quakers vigorously opposed.

With its location close to the A140/Hempnall cross roads, the Meeting House attracted support from a wide area with one of its trustees coming from as far away as Attleborough, but the second half of the 1700s proved a high point and by the time of the Religious census in 1851 only nine persons were in attendance that day, although the hall had a capacity of 210 at ground level with a further 90 seats in the galleries. Indeed it was reported in 1880 that the meeting house had been closed for long periods, so perhaps the spread of Primitive Methodism amongst rural communities provided another alternative for those looking for a simpler form of religious practice to that of the Church of England. Although efforts were made around the turn of the century to restart meetings in Tasburgh, they were again discontinued during WW1, and although the Meeting House reopened in 1926 following further repairs and alterations, in the mid-1930s it closed for good. In the absence of trustees the Board of Charity Commissioners in 1936 ordered that the property be transferred to Friends Trusts Limited as custodian trustee.

It is not clear whether the custodian trustee then sold or leased the property as a private residence but by the time of the 1939 Registration the occupants were William Morgan and his wife, Annie. He was a poultry farmer and his wife was a governor of the village school, and in the 1970s the Meeting House was owned by the Ridley family. He was the managing director of the well- established Ladies' and Gentlemen's outfitters of the same name with a shop on London Street in Norwich and another in the centre of Ipswich.