QUAKERS in Fordingbridge By
Julian Hewitt | Fordingbridge Museum
I suspect that most people, if asked, would not be able to furnish you with much information about Quakers. Quaker families have, however, played an important part in the development of our country, not the least in Fordingbridge. After many years of persecution and prohibition, Quakers were at last allowed to worship freely by the Toleration Act of 1689. In the 1690s William Lumber built a house in Roundhill in which he lived but which was also to provide a space for Quaker meetings. Records show that the house cost just over £55 to build and that the garden at the rear was to be used as a cemetery. The wife of Moses Harris, who was a Quaker living on the site of Harrisons Stationery shop, was interred there in 1698 wrapped in a woollen shroud. In the great fire of 1702, Quakers lost property valued at £939, which showed what prosperous members of the community they were. William Lumber’s house was badly damaged in the fire and he died the next year and was buried in his own garden. A new meeting house, probably a brick and timber house with thatched outbuildings, was erected on the spot in 1705. The two most prominent Quaker families in the town were the Neaves who had flour mills at Stuckton, and the Thompsons who had flax spinning mills at West and East Mills. Both families were major employers in the town. Like
all Quakers they relied on their conscience as the basis for their morality. They were benevolent in the treatment of their workers and involved in charitable work and public service in the town. The Thompsons lived in Bridge House and Southampton House in Horseport where Samuel built the Victoria Rooms for the use of the townsfolk. Samuel’s nephew Thomas Westlake came to work for his uncle at the age of 17 in 1843. He eventually lived in Oaklands, the large house on the right as you walk up Marl Lane, and married Hannah Neave who, before she died of tuberculosis at the early age of 24, produced a son Ernest. He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and The Royal Anthropological Institute. He also purchased Sandy Balls where he founded the Order of Woodcraft and Chivalry. The Neaves made a fortune from their Nutritious Farinaceous Food aimed at “Infants, Growing Children, Invalids and the Aged”. Their magnificent Highfield House, now divided into private apartments, is still to be seen on the left at the top of the hill on the road out of Fordingbridge towards Alderholt. The Meeting House was rebuilt in 1835 but, with numbers attending meetings declining, it closed in 1905 becoming a school run by Miss Lock and then an auction room. It is now used for Pilates. Visit www.mags4dorset.co.uk for more local news
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