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Attending Yearly Meeting: the unofficial record
The last weekend in May will see a transformation of Friends House, as Quakers from all over the country arrive for the annual assembly known as Yearly Meeting. Friends have gathered together yearly...
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Rachel Eveline Wilson papers and our new exhibition: an insight into the life...
An interesting recent addition to the Library’s collections has been the papers of Rachel Eveline Wilson (1894–1993) of Kidderminster, which primarily relate to her time in the Friends Ambulance Unit...
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Quaker sufferings records: an “embarras de richesse”
Readers of early Quaker literature cannot fail to be aware of the history of religious persecution of the Quakers in the seventeenth century. Although the Act of Toleration of 1689 marked the end of...
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Preservation news: some eighteenth century minute books
Years of use take their toll on books and manuscripts. Even with the most careful handling, moving documents from shelf to trolley, transporting them from the strongroom to the readers’ table or simply...
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World War I and its aftermath: cataloguing the papers of Hilda Clark (1881-1955)
We’re pleased to present a guest blog post from Emma Hancox, who recently spent two weeks at the Library as part of her archives and records management training. As a student on the M.A. course in...
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Woodbridge Friends visit the Library
Anyone can access Quaker Strongrooms, the blog, but not everyone has access to the strongrooms at Friends House. However, from time to time, groups of Quakers from meetings around the country make...
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Testing convictions: Harold Wild, a Manchester conscientious objector
What might a 19 year old pacifist think and feel under the threat of imminent military conscription? The papers of Harold Wild (1896-1979), recently received by the Library (MSS Acc. 11791), give us an...
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A controversial cabinet
Sitting in the corner of the strongrooms is a wooden cabinet containing a collection of printed works known as as the “Braithwaite Collection”, gifted to the Library in 1907 under certain conditions....
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Rusty staples and red rot: a student conservator reports. Part 1
We’re pleased to present the first of two guest blog posts from Sibel Ergener, a conservation student at West Dean, who recently spent a short but productive fortnight in the Library as a volunteer....
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Rusty staples and red rot: a student conservator reports. Part 2
Sibel Ergener, of West Dean College, continues her guest blogpost on voluntary conservation work she undertook at the Library this summer. The Library of the Society of Friends is a working library...
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Catherine Impey of Street, Somerset, and her radical anti-racist newspaper
Between 1888 and 1895, Catherine Impey (1847–1923) of Street, Somerset, wrote and published what is credited as being Britain’s first anti-racist periodical. Anti-Caste, as it was called, is one of the...
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Readers’ stories: researching Quaker missionaries in China
So far on the blog we’ve focused on what’s in the Library’s collections and work that’s being done to make them available. There’s another story to tell – who uses the Library and why. Here’s a guest...
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Conservation of Elizabeth Fry’s diaries
One of the most well-known Quakers is the 19th century philanthropist and friend of prisoners, Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845). Nearly all her diaries, covering most of her extremely busy life (spanning the...
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Milan to Madagascar: a best seller’s back story
In 2003 the Library received a gift of a copy of De imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ) by Thomas à Kempis, published at Milan in 1488. We were a little awed at first. Described within the...
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What could you borrow from an 18th-century Quaker meeting library?
“The perusal of valuable books, besides enlarging the mind, and promoting our temporal comfort and advantage, may be the means of spreading before us a pleasing view of the beauty and excellence of...
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A stitch in time
Earlier this year the blog carried a report from a student conservator about some simple repairs she did while on placement in the Library. There was such a warm response, we thought you might be...
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Cleanliness is a fine life-preserver: a strongroom is cleaned
On venturing into one of our strongrooms on the 19th November you would have been forgiven for thinking you had walked onto the set of a sci-fi film, with men in masks, plastic sheeting and strange...
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Christmas pudding: a strange disorderly jumble and mishmash
For what excess of Riot, Uncleanness, Prophaneness, Intemperancies in Meat and Drinks, Words and Works, with all kinds of Superfluity of Naughtiness do the greatest number of People not commit in these...
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Charles Holden, London Underground architect: a passion for beauty and for...
For Londoners and visitors alike navigating our great metropolis is likely to involve a descent into the earth, a tremendous gust of whistling wind and a warm, rattling rush beneath the familiar...
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Readers’ stories: the Elbow Street Scandal, chit chat and serious stuff
The second in our series of readers’ stories is from Bill Chadkirk, a former member of Friends House staff. Once we’d stopped blushing at the compliments we realised we had to blog Bill’s light hearted...
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