Records of Harrogate Preparative Meeting of the Society of Friends

Minutes of Meetings on Ministry and Oversight, 1905-1907 (1 vol.) [B 18]; Birth notes, 1864-1909 (2 vols.) [L 16, 13]; Burial notes, 1866-1907 (2 vols.) [L 17.1-17.2]

There was a community of Quakers in Harrogate and district in the late 17th century. The cases of John Hogg, who was put in the stocks for "speaking to the Priest at Rippon" in 1657, and Isabel Hogg, who was imprisoned in 1664 for non-payment of tithes, are both recorded by Besse. However the town did not have an independent Meeting and came within the orbit of neighbouring Knaresborough. In the 1820s and 1830s, travelling ministers such as Elizabeth Robson (1771-1843) and James Backhouse (1774-1869) visited Harrogate and held public meetings. By early 1835, a meeting for worship was established, solely for the use of visiting Friends, for there were none resident in the town at that time. An Allowed Meeting opened "during the season" from 1854, with its own purpose-built Meeting House on Chapel Street (now Oxford Street). This became a full Preparative Meeting in 1861. After the closure of Darley Meeting in 1887, Friends from there joined Harrogate and the Meeting was known locally as Darley and Harrogate until 1915. A new Meeting House was built at 12a Queen Parade in 1966 and is still in use. The Meeting has historically formed part of York Monthly Meeting.

The records are numbered and arranged according to the system used when they were in Clifford Street Meeting House

The conditions of deposit include a clause requiring written prior permission from a Friend Custodian for access to consult current legal documents and any material less than fifty years old

The collection of archives of the Society of Friends formerly held at the Friends Meeting House in Clifford Street, York

In English

Contents listed in Handlist 75, Inventory of the records of Yorkshire General Meeting and York and Thirsk Monthly Meetings of the Society of Friends formerly preserved at the Friends' Meeting House, Clifford Street, York (1986)

As with access, the photocopying of current legal documents and any material less than fifty years old requires the permission of a Friend Custodian

Related material in Leeds University Library: Records of York Monthly Meeting. Related material in other repositories: Records of Harrogate Friends Literary and Debating Society and further records of Preparative Meeting, Harrogate Friends Meeting House

See W. Pearson Thistlethwaite, The Quaker Meetings of Knaresborough and Harrogate (Society of Friends, 1984)

The records are deposited and remain the property of the Society of Friends