Coanwood Quaker Meeting House

You'd be a dilettante if you weren't drawn to the beautiful assonance and alliteration of the address of this building which is the Clattering Causeway, Coanwood!

This will get you to the old Coanwood Quaker Meeting House, an isolated single-story place of humble worship, nestled in a sparsely populated pocket of land south of Hadrian's Wall.

This was a beautiful, happy accident of a find and one which we've driven past many times over the years. There's always something new if you look a little deeper.

Pulling in at the side of the road, we were curious about the origins of this building and tappy lappied over the bridge up Clattering Causeway. The burn hurried over the stones in the riverbed and around the roots of the stream sucking hazels from which the place derives its name. The bridge gave good views of the primitive stone building.

Built in 1760, Cuthbert Wigham, a local farmer, was framing the way for a small scale Society of Friends; a group of Quakers who historically followed protestant Christian values. Quaker meetings until this time had been held at his own home at Burn House after Wigham obtained a licence in 1659, but he wanted to build a simple place of worship in which to hold their 'silent' Quaker meetings.

The famous early Quaker William Penn shown in this painting by Henry Inman said:

“True silence is the rest of the mind, and is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment”.

This speechless silence would most definitely have been obtained here as the only sound was that of the babbling brook and the lambs gambolling in the adjacent field.

The building is rectangular, small and spartan, measuring a diminutive 102ft by 20ft wide! Built of stone with sizeable stone quoins holding up the sides, it has 12 pane windows and a simple wooden baton door. Everything is pared down and unadorned. No gargoyles or fancy chancel.

An inscription on the lintel above the door confirms the building was built in 1760.

Inside, it felt like a relic from Little House on the Prairie. It was more like a schoolroom than a place of prayer. Lime wood pews lined the room and stood on a plain flagstone floor.

Six rows of open-backed benches faced west, while at the front, and facing the congregation, raised up on a plinth, were two front facing benches in quite close proximity.

Imagine sitting here, eyeballing your elders, as that's what they were for. Elders were older members of the Quaker community appointed to guide and nurture the spiritual life of the community. Unchanged throughout time, these Elder's Benches are a lasting symbol, and Coanwood Friends Meeting House describe it as “a rare survival of the historic Quaker layout”.

A simple aisle divides the rows of benches. One thing that struck us was the very open nature of the building. No nooks and crannies for altars or sedilia.

The windows were plain glass, and maybe it was the light let in and afforded to the Quakers that was celebrated, rather than the iconography of stained glass and the stories they told. Everything is discreet and abbreviated.

Built at a cost of £104, the meeting house is special in that it has never been modified other than to replace its heather thatch roof being replaced by a more modern slate tile in the 19th Century.

Turning back to face up the aisle, we could see a separate room, making the hall curiously divided into two with some strange, simple shutters on a pulley system, top hinged and held up out of the way. The room was divided to accommodate both men and women and as such the shutters would on occasion be lowered to allow for private talk of business, faith, teaching or matters relating to the community. The shutters would be raised at a time of communal worship and prayer, and by the 19th century had been modernised to use winches.

The end room had an old photograph of the 1944 Coanwood Home Guard, and a glass display case with various types and styles of cotton and a small wrought iron fireplace. It really felt like we were stepping into a space used long ago that hadn't altered in aeons.

The meeting house closed its door to worship in 1909. It was utilised for some years as a reading room and is now in the care of the Historic Chapels Trust. As a reminder of its history and heritage an annual Quaker picnic is held each September when people come to connect and worship together. In recent times, an art fair has been held in the building at Christmas, a beautiful way to keep the building breathing. It's welcomingly advertised as being open all hours.

It's a peaceable place, plain and humble.

Outside, the gravestones were unostentatious and uniform, two rows facing east. Most bore the name of Wigham, still a familiar family in this area.

We leant in close to read beyond the lichen and liverwort. “In Loving Memory of Mary Isabella...” and two eyes stared at us like an elder from the front facing benches. A female pheasant, locked onto her nest, clocked us and was giving us low, chesty growls to go away...which we did.

We stood for some time on the other side of the wall, disguised through the trees, when we saw her get off her nest for a preen, a leg stretch and a peck about. She'd been nurturing twelve olive green eggs, camouflaged in the shadow of Mary Isabella's burial mound.