HISTORY
Tavistock Quakers The re-discovered boundary stone in Dolvin Road Cemetery, Tavistock With your old leather britches And your shaggy shaggy locks You are tearing down the pillars Of the world, George Fox So runs a song about the rebel Christian, George Fox, whose vision and preaching inspired the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, better known by its nickname ‘Quakers’, in the mid-seventeenth century. Fox referred to this part of the world in the South West as ‘that dark country’, because of a long term of imprisonment in Launceston Gaol, where there is still a plaque above his dungeon known as the Doomsdale. It has been suggested that in 1655 Fox came to Tavistock during the period when he was based in Plymouth, and as records recall, he and other Quakers were ‘most actively engaged in everywhere spreading what was so happily called the Truth’. He certainly wrote about crossing Horsebridge when arriving into West Devon from Cornwall on his journeys.
Old Meeting House - William Merrifield Collection
The Society of Friends first appeared in Tavistock in 1702 when Richard Hingeston was granted £1 4s 0d, by the Devon and Cornwall Quarterly Meeting of the Friends held at Exeter, ‘for ye Rent of a house to meet in at Tavistock’. This house was in what is now called Old Exeter Road, formerly Exeter Street. The Friends continued to meet in hired premises until at their monthly meeting, held on the 9th of the Twelfth Month, 1740, it was decided to apply for a licence for a meeting house (The twelfth month was February in the Quaker calendar at that time; 25th March was the first day of the year – thus Twelfth Month 1740 is February 1741 in today’s calendar). This would appear to indicate the existence of a fairly strong society,
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