AA #8: Quaker Cottage
The cache, a camo-taped preform tube, is hidden alongside the farm access lane as it makes its way up to the main village road passing this old meeting place . . .
In the early days Quakerism in mid-Wharfedale centred on Askwith and Addingham (Farfield). There was a Quaker burial ground at Askwith from c.1660 and a meeting house from 1665 – first wooden, then rebuilt in stone in 1704. But the Askwith Meeting closed in 1778, because of falling membership and financial difficulties, and it merged with Otley, which had had its own meeting house at Cross Green from 1776. This merged meeting then merged in turn with Rawdon in 1792, and Otley meeting house closed, it seems, in 1822.
Ilkley, meanwhile, was becoming prosperous, and accommodation for Quaker meetings there was established in 1862, followed by the erection of a purpose-built meeting house in 1869.
The Quaker Meeting House, the building located at N 53 55.634 W 1 44.527 is Grade 2 listed and the 1987 Historic England listing reads:
Friends' Meeting House, now private house. 1704, restored and extended c.1980. Coursed squared gritstone, graduated grey slate roof. Single storey with attics, 3 bays. Quoins. Central C20 glazed door with chamfered quoined jambs and lintel with C20 inscription: '1704 AD'. Recessed chamfered mullion windows, to left of 3 lights, to right of 4 lights.
Right return: 3-light mullion window lights attic. Bulbous kneelers, copings missing. C20 alterations include a large window in the left return and single-storey rear extension. A C19 photograph in the possession of the occupier shows the house with a thatched roof. The meeting house was taken over by Primitive Methodists who abandoned it c1880. In 1900 the house was described as 'now in ruins' and the grave mounds had sunk.
A small Quaker burial ground is pinpointed on an aerial image at approx. N 53 55.635 W 1 44.516 on the east side of the cottage.
