Records of Brighouse Preparative Meeting of the Society of Friends

Minutes of Preparative Meeting, 1701-1968 (6 vols.) [P 41, 36-37; AA 11-13]; Minutes of Women's Preparative Meeting, 1706-1875 (4 vols.) [AA 16, 14-15; SS 2]; Lists of members, 1839-1925, [1877] & [1887-1889] (3 items) [P 43; M 16-17]; Abstract book, [1873] [Y 11]; Copy title deed for Brighouse Meeting House, 1699 [AA 6/5]; Papers re. sale of part of old burial ground, 1880-1990 (1 bundle) [Y 8]; Plans of Brighouse Meeting House and burial ground, 1857 & no dates (3 items) [DD 8/1, 31]; Papers re. Brighouse Friends, including Captain Thomas Taylor, 19th century-1951 (1 bundle & 1 item) [PA 73, 79]; Papers, 1769-1811 (1 bundle) [SS 21]; Volume of marriages and registration acts, 1836-1837 [SS 1]

A Meeting was settled in Brighouse around 1652 by Christopher Taylor of Chapel-in-the-Bryer, who had been convinced by the preaching of William Dewsbury. Groups of Quakers from the area were amongst those imprisoned in York Castle in January 1661, including John Green of Liversedge, who eventually died in prison in 1676. The Meeting was recorded in 1665 as Brighouse and Mankinholes, part of Pontefract Monthly Meeting. In 1669, it became part of the newly formed Brighouse Monthly Meeting. It drew in Friends from Liversedge, Oakenshaw, Bradford, Bowling and Great Horton, as well as Brighouse. Meetings were held at the homes of Thomas Taylor of Brighouse, John Green of Liversedge and William Pearson of Oakenshaw. Mankinholes formed a separate Meeting and Bradford broke away by 1670 or 1671. A decade later, Friends had acquired their first Meeting House and burial ground, on Snake Hill, Rastrick. The site was known as Scar Mill Cliff and was rebuilt in 1737. Land at Newlands was bought in 1863 and six years later a large Meeting House with classrooms opened on the site. Since this was sold in 1958, the Meeting continued in rented accommodation until its closure in 1988.

The records are numbered and arranged according to the system used when they were in Carlton Hill 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 at Carlton Hill, Leeds

In English

Contents listed in Handlist 99, Inventory of the records of Brighouse, Knaresborough, Leeds, and Settle Monthly Meetings of the Society of Friends formerly preserved at the Friends Meeting Housem, Carlton Hill, Leeds, 2nd edition, 1997

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 Brighouse Monthly Meeting

See H. Travis Clay, "Brighouse Quaker Meeting", in Transactions of the Halifax Antiquarian Society, 1948, pp.19-25

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