Tavistock Quakers
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.
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, yet in 1744 the reply of the vicar, Rev. William Brown, to the Visitation Query ‘Have you any Disenters in the parish?’, was that the only ones were Presbyterians. Rev. John Jago made the same reply twenty years later in 1764 and in 1779; his reply to the question was that there was a meeting house for Presbyterians and two for Methodists, but again no reference to Quakers. In 1821 however, Rev. Ed. Atkins Bray reported: “The Quakers have but lately appeared and I know not that they have a place of worship.”
There is, in fact, no record in the Friends’ minute books of any society existing at Tavistock for a period of 83 years after the 1740 minute, and it is curious that the projected meeting house was not proceeded with in that year. However, the Quarterly Meeting held on the 25th of the Sixth Month 1823, was invited to sanction the establishment at Tavistock of a regular ‘meeting for worship’, but permission was not granted until the Quarterly Meeting held 24th of the Ninth Month 1823 – there were then five families of Friends resident in the town. The meetings were held in a room in a house in a poor quarter in Exeter Street and the number of Friends gradually increased until in 1834 there were 36 members of the society (19 male and 17 female).
The increased membership caused the society to attempt to provide something more suitable for a meeting place and accordingly a site was obtained from the Duke of Bedford, with a frontage of 65 feet and a depth of 126 feet, in the middle of Dolvin Road which is described in the lease as ‘the road from Plymouth Bridge to L’Moreton’ (Abbey Bridge to Moretonhampstead). The lease was dated 28th of the Seventh Month 1836, and was granted to Joseph Treffry of Plymouth, merchant William Collier of Plymouth, and chemist Benjamin Balkwill of Plymouth, for 99 years from Lady Day 1836, at a ground rent of £1 1s 0d per annum. Four boundary stones were erected to mark out the Quaker plot for a burial ground and meeting house. Building operations commenced in 1834 and finished in the summer of 1835; the first meeting for worship was held on Fifth Day (Thursday), the 11th of the Sixth Month 1835. The meeting house was a plain square structure, built of stone with seating accommodation for about 100 persons. Not long after the building was completed the first interment was made in the attached graveyard. John Tresize, a working miner, was killed by a fall of rocks and was buried on the 7th of the Second Month 1836.
The meeting house continued to be used for about twenty-five years until numbers began to decline; by 1865 only two Friends, a brother and sister, remained. These two solitary Friends kept the meeting house open, but they were the only attendants and in 1870 it was opened for the last time. In 1877 the lease of the site was surrendered to the Duke of Bedford for £50 and the furniture removed to the Friends’ First Day Schoolroom in Plymouth. Soon afterwards the building and the boundary walls of the site were demolished, the Friends’ graveyard and the adjoining cemetery becoming one. Over time only three of the four boundary stones remained in situ.
In December 2019, careful measurements and plans were made, using geometry and the position of the existing three boundary stones to assist in determining the probable location of the missing stone. Tavistock Town Council, owners of the Dolvin Road cemetery site, gave permission for an archaeological investigation which was completed by Simon Dell, Member of Tavistock Meeting, along with Richard Ware and Steve Mason. The missing stone was discovered only 300mm from the assumed location, having been covered over by spoil from grave digging and the ruins of the demolished meeting house and nearby boundary well. In January the stone was unearthed, raised and reinstalled in the correct location to accompany the other three boundary marker stones. At the same time, at the request of the council, an extended trench led to the identification of the Quaker ground wall foundations. Our thanks go to Tavistock Town Council for allowing the restoration of the fourth boundary stone.
Simon Dell