"Quakers' Rest", Little Eccleston

by Julia M Beeden

The following is a brief account of the early history of the Society of Friends in the Fylde and their Meeting House and Burial Ground in Blackpool Old Road, Little Eccleston. This research was made using original documents kindly loaned to the writer by Mr and Mrs G N Taylor of "Quakers' Rest", Dilworth Abbatt's Quaker Annals of Preston and the Fylde, and other Friends' documents now deposited at the Lancashire Record Office.

The property, now called "Quakers' Rest", is first mentioned in an Indenture dated 1 May 1669, the 21st (sic) year of Charles II's reign. William Brewer, a yeoman farmer of Little Eccleston, owned by inheritance a close of land called the Hays Hey, out of which he sold a small garden or croft of about four falls of land to John White, yeoman of Great Eccleston, and Thomas Moone, a husbandman of Woodplumpton. The amount charged was 20 shillings (=£1) which would seem to be a large amount for this was a transaction between Quakers, members of the Meeting of Fylde Friends. In fact John White, Thomas Moone and William Brewer, had been among a number of Fylde Friends fined heavily for the non-payment of tithes in 1662 (1). The land became known at some time as "Brewers' Yard" (2), that is the enclosure of the Brewer family, though this title was not used officially till a Nineteenth Century document.

John White and his wife Ellen lived at Cross House, Great Eccleston; a more modern house has been rebuilt on approximately the same site, but the White family had lived in the district since Henry VIII's time (3). The Moone family was established in the village of Woodplumpton north of Preston. Thomas was the third son of Edward and Isabel Moone who joined the Society of Friends in about 1653 (4). Together with his brothers John and Edward he suffered imprisonment for his faith, mainly in Lancaster Castle. In 1665 John Moone married Margaret Harrison widow of Thomas Harrison of Carr House on the North side of Garstang, where he came to live (5). Some indication of the close family ties of the Quaker community will become more apparent later, for Margaret was a daughter of John Townson of Chapel House in Over Wyresdale and a sister of Jennet Cragg (6).

Some twenty years later, John White was the only survivor of the Friends mentioned in the above document, therefore an 'indorsement' was made on the back of the deed on 25 February 1690, stating that the land had been bought by the Friends of the Fylde Meeting for a Burying place. John White now conveyed the land to Richard Coward, Timothy Townson, Thomas Tomlinson and Henry Tomlinson, the Trustees of the Fylde Meeting appointed by Richard Coward to preserve the land for its intended use.

This small group of early Quaker families lived either side of the lower reaches of the River Wyre. They were the first gathering to be organised in a Preparative Meeting which sent representatives to the Lancaster Monthly Meeting (7). The Minutes suggest that in the early years they met regularly in each other's houses in the Eccleston, Poulton and Rawcliffe areas. North of the Wyre lived John Townson junior and his brothers Henry and Timothy, sons of John Townson of Over Wyresdale. They may have lived at the now-demolished Quakers' Farm in Out Rawcliffe (8). Also living in Out Rawcliffe was John Valiant, a Quaker Elder and frequent representative to the Quarterly Meetings and to the local Meetings for Sufferings. His home is likely to have been the place known as "Valiants' Farm" (9).

Henry Tomlinson and his brother Thomas lived at Crossmore near Great Eccleston. Richard Coward, a yeoman, was a substantial Friend with much land in Out Rawcliffe and Tarnacre. He left a bequest of £30 to the Fylde Monthly Meeting and in 1715 had built the first Meeting House (10). This was a small building with a stable attached, at one end of the Burial Ground at Little Eccleston, which later became converted into a cottage (11). The front gardens and house buildings comprise the site of the Burial Ground and Meeting House under discussion. The rear gardens did not then belong to the property.

By 1720 both Richard Coward and Thomas Tomlinson were dead, Henry Tomlinson had moved to Grindleton in Yorkshire where he was described as a whitesmith, and Timothy Townson had settled as a gentleman in Leominster in Herefordshire; therefore it was necessary to draw up a new deed to the Friends' Burying Ground, on 23 October 1720, in the 7th year of George I's reign. The signatories to this new deed, described as an Indenture Tripartite, were Thomas Cartmell of 'Ratcliffe', a yeoman, Nathan Cartmell also a yeoman, and Moses Butler a collarmaker of 'Ratcliffe' (Out Rawcliffe). They purchased the property for the presumably nominal sum of ten shillings (=50p) on behalf of the Fylde Meeting at Eccleston for a "Burying Place" and thus became the new trustees.

The Cartmell family lived at Liscoe (12), a farmhouse in Out Rawcliffe across the River Wyre from Mains Hall in Singleton. This had been an earlier home of the Butler family, large landowners of Out Rawcliffe, and rented by John Cartmell in the early Eighteenth Century. The house became the centre for the Fylde Monthly Meeting, many of the meetings being held there in any one year. John Cartmell had three sons, Isaac, Thomas and Nathan. Thomas was Clerk and Treasurer to the Fylde Preparative Meeting and also Clerk Nathan was a useful Friend, but his marriage to a non- to the Fylde Monthly Meeting. Quaker before a Priest had aroused some comment. Both Liscoe and Mains Hall were reputed to be hiding places for fugitives, probably religious, and there was a countryside tradition of Quakers associating with Liscoe. Thus we get the almost inevitable legend of a tunnel under the river connecting the two houses, but there can be no truth in that idea (13).

A new Indenture had to be drawn up, on 7 July 1762 in the second year of the reign of George III, because by then Thomas Cartmell was dead and Nathan Cartmell was living at Preston Patrick Hall in Burton-in-Kendal, Westmorland. The new trustees were Robert Butler of Out Rawcliffe, son of the Moses mentioned in the previous deed, with Robert Abbott the younger, a shopkeeper in Preston, and James Ryley, a yeoman farmer of Clifton in Kirkham Parish. The property was stated to be kept as a Burying Place and Meeting Place, walled or fenced in, for the Quakers and any others for the worship of God.

The frequent occurrence of the surname "Butler" in the area should be related to the fact that for many centuries the Butlers were major landowners in the Over-Wyre region. No doubt many of the local families of that surname descend from cadet branches of the original Butler stock.

Robert Abbatt (the more modern spelling of the surname favours the second 'a') junior, became Clerk to the Fylde Monthly Meeting in 1754 (14) at a time when control of the Society locally seemed to be moving away from the country areas and into Preston, away from the farming community and into the hands of the urban businessmen. Much of the Abbatt family history in Longridge and Preston and its contribution to the Quaker movement in North Lancashire is narrated in Quaker Annals of Preston and the Fylde by Dilworth Abbatt, a descendant of the same family. The Ryley family of Clifton in the Fylde produced dedicated members of the Society during the Eighteenth Century. There were marriage links with the Quaker families of Cropper and Crosfield. Thomas Ryley, who died at Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire on his way to the yearly meeting in London in 1729, had married the widow of Richard Coward's son from Out Rawcliffe. His house on the main road in Clifton had buildings inscribed (see below) after himself and his wife Mary.

    R
T        M 
  1724

The Vicar of Kirkham made frequent complaint in the Eighteenth Century about the Quakers of Clifton and Greeno (Greenhalgh in the Fylde) (15).

Although by the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the Meeting House at Little Eccleston was coming towards the end of its active life, a new Indenture was drawn up on 24 December 1808. Robert Butler was the sole survivor of the previous trustees, Robert Abbatt and James Ryley being by then dead. At the cost of only 5/- (25p) each the new trustees were Moses Bond, a husbandman of Staynal-with-Stalmine, Robert Benson, a Preston grocer, Michael Satterthwaite, a leather-cutter, and Isaac Wilcockson, a stationer, both also of Preston. Organisation of the Fylde Quakers was by then virtually under the control of the Preston Monthly Meeting with its strong compliment of wealthy and influential Preston businessmen. This was probably a pattern seen in many of the country's main manufacturing districts. Robert Benson was head of the Preston Meeting, and a Preston Alderman and Magistrate (16). Michael Satterthwaite was Clerk to the Preston Monthly Meeting from 1812 to 1830 (17). Isaac Wilcockson also became a Preston Councillor. He lost his Membership of the Society of Friends by "marrying out". At 29 years of age he became proprietor of the "Preston Review" which he renamed the "Preston Chronicle" (18).

By the Nineteenth Century "Quakers' Rest", to give the property its present title, was formally known as "Be Yard" and comprised a stable or outhouse with Meeting House for Divine Worship. The Meeting House had actually been closed in 1791 having been used for over three-quarters of a century by the Fylde Monthly and Preparative Meetings. Of the four Preparative Meetings, in the area forming the Fylde Monthly Meeting, Chipping, Claughton (Garstang), Freckleton and Fylde, this latter had been the most vigorous. Shortly after the closure of the Meeting House the name of the Monthly Meeting was transferred from Fylde to Preston. The last burial here took place in 1825, being that of Richard Bond, a yeoman of Stalmine, aged 83. The Registers suggest that some sixty Friends were buried there (19). In 1865 the Eccleston Meeting House and Burial Ground Trust amalgamated with that of Freckleton and this appears to mark the end of the Eccleston Meeting.

References

1. Dilworth Abbatt, Quaker Annals of Preston and the Fylde, 1653 1900 (London Undated), p 9.
2. op. cit., p 15.
3. ibid.
4. op. cit., p 8.
5. op. cit., p 11.
6. See previous article re Kelsall Family.
7. Dilworth Abbatt, op. cit., p 6.
8. For this and other Quaker Houses in the Fylde see:- RC Watson and M E McClintock, Traditional Houses of the Fylde, (University of Lancaster, C.N.W.R.S. Occasional Paper 6, 1979).
9. Dilworth Abbatt, op. cit. p 16.
10. Fylde Preparative Meeting, Minute Book, L.R.0. FRP 3/1, Minute of 29th. 2 mo. 1716.
11. Dilworth Abbatt, op. cit. pp 16-17.
12. See: RC Watson and M E McClintock, "An Early Rawcliffe House and its Contemporaries", Over-Wyre Historical Journal, Vol II (1982-83) pp 7-13.
13. Dilworth Abbatt, op. cit. pp 21-22.
14. op. cit. p 28.
15. op. cit. pp 32-34.
16. op. cit. p 140.
17. op. cit. p 161.
18. op. cit. p 158-159.
19. op. cit. p 17.