Brigflatts Meeting House or Briggflatts Meeting House is a
Friends Meeting House
A Friends meeting house is a meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where meeting for worship is usually held.
Typically, Friends meeting houses are simple and resemble local residential buildings. Steeples, spires, and ...
of the
Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
, near
Sedbergh
Sedbergh ( or ) is a town and civil parish in Cumbria, England. The 2001 census gave the parish a population of 2,705, increasing at the 2011 census to 2,765. Historically in the West Riding of Yorkshire, it lies about east of Kendal, no ...
,
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumb ...
, in north-western
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. Built in 1675, it is the second oldest Friends Meeting House in England.
It has been
listed Grade I
In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...
on the
National Heritage List for England
The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, an ...
since March 1954.
It is the subject of a twelve-line poem titled "At Briggflatts meetinghouse" by British modernist poet
Basil Bunting
Basil Cheesman Bunting (1 March 1900 – 17 April 1985) was a British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of '' Briggflatts'' in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist traditio ...
. Bunting's poem was written in 1975 for the 300th anniversary of the meeting house's construction.
[ Cites the poem as ''Odes II:11, 1975''.]
Throughout its history, the spelling has varied from ''Brigflatts'', ''Brigflats'', ''Briggflats'', or ''Briggflatts'', for both the village and the Quaker Meeting.
Currently, the Quaker Meeting uses the spelling "Brigflatts".
[See]
Brigflatts Quaker Meeting
Retrieved 13 May 2015. The variant spelling with two g's and two t's was used by Bunting for his two poems, "At Briggflatts Meetinghouse" (1975) and the earlier autobiographical long poem ''
Briggflatts
''Briggflatts'' is a long poem by Basil Bunting published in 1966. The work is subtitled "An Autobiography." The title "Briggflatts" comes from the name of Brigflatts Meeting House (spelled with one "g" in Quaker circles), a Quaker Friends meeting ...
'' (1965).
The Meeting House
'Howgills' in
Letchworth Garden City
Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town in the North Hertfordshire district of Hertfordshire, England. It is noted for being the first garden city. The population at the time of the 2011 census was 33,249.
Letchworth ...
in
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...
is based on Brigflatts.
References
External links
VisitCumbria.com "Brigflatts Meeting House" pagewith several good photos.
Quaker meeting houses in England
Buildings and structures in Cumbria
Churches completed in 1675
17th-century Quaker meeting houses
Sedbergh
1675 establishments in England
Grade I listed buildings in Cumbria
Grade I listed religious buildings and structures
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