In the mid-nineteenth century Lewes Meeting was, by the standards of Quaker meetings in other parts of the country and the Lewes churches, very small. Throughout the century the number of members varied between twenty and forty, although meetings normally attracted as many attenders, some of whom were present at all meetings for worship but not for business meetings. For a century the meeting had included men of considerable status in the commercial life of the town, but socially they remained distinct from its life, and the few who achieved a national reputation did so after they left Lewes.

Almost suddenly the position changed. It was the presence of several local people of ability, the retirement to Lewes of several comparatively young men, and a readiness to participate in the life of the community that brought this about. In the last half of the century Lewes Friends held the highest offices in the Society - Clerk to Meeting for Sufferings, Assistant Clerk and Clerk to Yearly Meeting - and others who held those positions had come from Lewes or were closely related to Lewes Friends. The few Quakers from the meeting played an active part in most of the local societies, holding office in many, serving as magistrates, and one became Mayor. The long, depressing minute books of the Quietist period did no justice to the positive side of the Quaker meetings of the time, and we have little more record of the religious life of the meeting in this happier time, although many personal comments in the surviving documents make it clear that these Friends regarded worship and the affairs of ordinary life as inseparable.

From the memoirs of Friends we can build up a very detailed picture of the Meeting. The building to the north of the Meeting House dates from the late Victorian times, and from the 1970's when the old coach house was demolished, but the new work blends into the old. The Meeting House and the rooms to the south are little changed.

Opposite to the Meeting House was Leighside, the home of Burwood Godlee. Round this ran the railway. The first line, from Brighton, entered Lewes in 1846 and ran to a terminus next to Fitzroy House. Points a few hundred yards back down the line opened the track to the Hastings line, but trains which had entered the terminus had to reverse down the line to the points and then go forward up the Hastings loop. In 1847 Two spacious platforms, one of 310 feet long on the down line and 200 feet long on the up line, have been made at the back of Mr Godlee's garden wall, near Pinwell, and in October of that year the London line was opened to passengers. These station arrangements have been described by one writer as some of the worst ever built, but they resulted in a royal visit to Leighside.

In 1848 Louis Philippe, King of France, had been forced to flee his country in disguise. He landed at Newhaven, spent the night at the Bridge Hotel, and travelled to London the next day. He had to change trains at Lewes, and the principal citizens of the town were all eager to offer him hospitality. Burwood Godlee's house was the most convenient to the station, but apparently he had some scruple about meeting the king, so he and his wife Priscilla went away for the day, leaving the two maids to prepare a suitable lunch for the royal visitor.

The house was a beautiful one in Regency style, surrounded by a veranda and set in large grounds. Around its walls were large square wooden pots containing aloes bushes, two of which reached maturity and flowered. There was a lake crossed at a narrow point by a rustic bridge and surrounded by arum lilies. Some Friends had permission to spend a while rowing before meeting. The water feeding the lake sprang up from an artesian well which he had bored, welling up through beach shingle in a rocky basin surrounded by ferns. Burwood Godlee had bought a pair of swans for the lake, but the male flew at him so viciously that he had to send it away, while the female remained, expecting to be petted and fed. One friend wrote that the silence of the meeting was sometimes broken by the scream of a peacock in a near-by garden. It would not have been out of character for Burwood Godlee to have kept peacocks! In addition to the ornamental grounds they had a walled kitchen garden with fruit, vegetables and beehives.

Leighside
Photograph by Reeves

He was also something of an astronomer, and once invited the children of the meeting to look through his telescope at the rings of Saturn. He was a founder member of the Lewes Scientific Society, serving as a committee member for the maximum period allowed by its constitution, and then as a Vice-President for the rest of his life. He served in a similar capacity for the Mechanics Institute. Although his business and managerial talents were considerable, it was in technical matters that he excelled. At the age of twenty he was instrumental in bringing gas to Lewes, and he was chairman of the gas company 60 years later. He was a director of the Lewes Baths Association, commissioner for the town sewers, a trustee of the Lower Ouse Navigation Company, and chairman of the board of trustees of the Lewes Savings Bank. He supported the Lewes School of Art and was treasurer of the local Friends school. He served on the Board of the British Schools Association and gave £500 to the local British School in Lancaster Street and £250 to the Lewes Town Infirmary and Dispensary. In 1855 he became a county magistrate, and was the only non-conformist on the bench until the late 1870's. At the meeting he was a minister and he served as Preparative Meeting Clerk for many years.

Burwood Godles
Photograph supplied by the Library Committee of the Religious Society of Friends

When Burwood Godlee died in December 1882 his friend, Caleb Rickman Kemp, wrote in his journal: His energy was very great, concerning himself in business (both private and public) & in philanthropic works. He was very impulsive & changeable in his likes and dislikes. He was impulsive, even, in religious tenderness, and contemporaneously in severe judgement. He was very jealous of his reputation; and this, at times, led him to, unconsciously, do himself great injustice. He was a splendid man to help a friend thro' a difficulty - and had great confidence in his own opinion, tho' he was given to change his opinion somewhat quickly. In many things - including likes and dislikes - he was constant. His tastes were scientific and his highest attainments (intellectual) were scientific. Lewes has lost a patriotic inhabitant and the poor a firm friend. Many mourn his loss.

His death spared him the heartbreak of seeing the destruction of his beloved Leighside. The Friars Walk terminus of the railway had closed in 1857, after the building of the present station. In 1868 the line was extended from the points at Pinwell out to Hamsey. This was not convenient, and in 1889 a viaduct was built through the gardens of Leighside, the arches crossing the centre of the lake. An entrance opposite All Saints still leads to a bridge over the railway line from which a drive descended to the house, but there was also access from a tunnel under the tracks.

In front of the meeting house was the graveyard, the older graves without headstones and the newer ones with simple headstones in a uniform style to indicate that in death all are equal. By the front wall was a row of lime trees.

Just before Meeting Friends could be seen arriving. John Rickman and his daughters drove in from Wellingham in an old fashioned family carriage called a sociable which opened at the back like an omnibus. Their coachman, Henry Wycherley, would put up the horse and carriage at the nearest inn, and then come to meeting. Later, perhaps because inns fell out of favour, Friends had their own coach house built. Charles Sturt drove in from East Hoathly in a pony and cart. Nathan and Rachel Smith always arrived at exactly the same time every Sunday, walking down from the High Street, she the very pink of propriety, with her skirts lifted just so, and not a hair awry, and he, dear old man, lumbering along a few steps behind, carrying a huge umbrella. They frowned at children who didn't sit still in Meeting, and never invited children to their home. Eliza Paine walked down from her home in Albion Street where she lived in furnished rooms. One young man came on his own. Even the children were aware that he was a Conservative: every one else was a Liberal. This was John Clay Lucas. Eventually, in 1876, he left the Meeting, was baptised an Anglican and married the daughter of a local Vicar.

The congregation was increased by about 25 girls who walked in pairs from the Quaker School in the High Street. The school had moved there from the Friars, as we shall hear later. There were also two or three girls from Caroline Speciall's school in The Crescent.

Brick paths led up to the Meeting House door and along the front of the building. Prom the porch one door opened into the small two-roomed cottage on the left, occupied by the tall old lady who looked after the premises. The other door opened into the meeting room. It was bare of any kind of ornament, even of paint. There was plain matting on the floor, and a small air-tight stove. Venetian blinds shaded the meeting in summer, and the children watched the round spots of sunshine from the cord holes creeping over the walls. The ministers' gallery was centrally placed, with two small seats on either side. In the late 1850's there were, on the woman's side (at the west) Rachel and Matilda Rickman, while Caleb Kemp, John Hodgkin and John Rickman sat on the right. John Rickman was in his eighties, and sat with his feet on a warm rug. The room was generally quite full, so that the schoolgirls who could not find seats on the benches on the women's side had to sit in the gallery at the back.

Rachel Rickman was rather feared by the children. She spoke in an old-fashioned chanting voice. In the days of Quietism Friends only spoke when under inspiration, and the style of delivery marked such ministry from ordinary speech. In the early days of the Society it was the custom for men to wear their hats in meeting, removing them only when vocal prayer was offered. We do not know at what time this practice ceased at Lewes, but we know that in the 1860's any Friend moved to minister would stand, and if they prayed they would kneel while the others stood.

There was little for the children, no Bible reading or singing, and the preaching was often beyond their understanding, but Maude Robinson remembered for the rest of her life how a tall young man, with reddish hair, rose and spoke a few trembling sentences. This was Jonathan Hodgkin and his father, John Hodgkin, in the ministers gallery, broke into a beaming smile, as it was the first time that his son had ministered.

The children, like the adults, went to meeting three times a week, on Wednesday and twice on Sunday. The meetings lasted only an hour; a century before they had lasted an hour and a half. Once home, meeting was not forgotten. Catherine Bastin (nèe Catherine Taylor) told of how they would play at Preparative Meeting, with a copy of the Book of Discipline. Her sister Mary was always the Clerk. She would call for the names of representatives to Monthly Meeting, and read the queries and replies in a voice of the utmost seriousness. Sometimes they played at just Meeting' and Mary would stand up and preach, imitating exactly the tones and gestures of John Hodgkin. He had a voice of singular strength and clearness; and under the pressure of religious feeling he generally exerted its full power. To some this seemed a waste of energy, but a deaf Friend commented, "We thank thee for speaking so loud. Thou art the only Minister in the Meeting whom we always hear."

John Rickman died in 1859, and a few years later the ministers' gallery had, in order, Rachel Rickman, Mary Ann Speciall, Charlotte Smith, Matilda Rickman, and John Hodgkin, while Sarah Horne Rickman, Priscilla Godlee, Mary Trusted, Burwood Godlee, Richard Peters Rickman, and Charles Sturt sat in the front row. On the two side seats were Margaret and Joseph Woods. By 1870 Margaret Woods had died, Burwood Godlee had moved up to the back row, and Charles Sturt occupied the side seat.

This sketch of the Meeting has necessarily introduced many new names. We have a good deal of information about many of these people. It is now time to introduce the newcomers and add more detail to the portraits of those who have only been sketched so far.

An earlier chapter told of the boyhood of John and Thomas Hodgkin. John practised for many years as a lawyer in London. He was married at the age of 29 to Elizabeth Howard, but after 6 years she died, leaving him with 5 children. On her death-bed she had this special message for him, just this: not to withhold anything, either public or private, which may be required for the good of our poor society. Two years later he was recorded as a minister by Tottenham Meeting. He was married again, to Anne Backhouse, and in 1843 he became seriously ill. When he recovered he had the conviction that he had been spared to preach the Gospel, and with his wife's encouragement he retired to devote himself to this exclusively. Anne Hodgkin died in 1843, and he was married a third time, in 1850, to Elizabeth Haughton.

During the Irish famine of 1845-6 he assisted the relief committees in London and Dublin, and from 1846, perhaps earlier, he was an assistant clerk at Yearly Meeting. He spent some time in Galway, struggling hard, but in the end unsuccessfully, to teach improved methods of fishing. His legal friends tried to persuade him to return to the profession, and he was offered the post of judge in a court which had earlier been created on his recommendation, but he refused it. Prom 1850 to 1851 he served as Clerk of Yearly meeting, an unusually short term of office. He was succeeded by Joseph Thorp until 1862, when Edward Backhouse, a relative of his former wife, was appointed, while the Clerk to Meeting for Sufferings from 1862 to 1869 was Rickman Godlee, son of John Godlee.

In 1858 John Hodgkin returned to Lewes, living at first in Barcombe, and then renting Shelleys in the High Street at St Annes. This is a old house, with the date 1577 still visible over the door, which was once the home of justice Henry Shelley. Alice Mary Hodgkin remembered it as a very happy home. It was a rambling old house, with a large paddock at the back, and beyond that a little farm, with cows, pigs and chickens, and a fruit and vegetable garden where the children played. The family lived a secluded life, and the children of the meeting only visited them occasionally to have tea in their hayfield, but one of the older visitors to the house was Alfred Waterhouse, a young architect who terraced some of the garden. He married John's daughter, Elizabeth, and eventually became Sir Alfred Waterhouse, now best known for the design of the Natural History Museum in London. Another of the elder daughters married Edward Fry, later Sir Edward Fry, the judge.

At the age of 61 he believed himself called to preach the gospel in America. This was a very difficult time for Friends in America, since, during the Civil War, their two great testimonies against war and against slavery tended to draw them in opposite directions. Though not a bad sailor, he had a peculiar aversion to travelling by sea; so much so that when he had once crossed the Atlantic he was often heard. to say that nothing but the fact that his wife and children were in England would have ever induced him to recross it.

During the last few years of his life he took an active part in the proceedings of the Social-Science congress, until, in the summer of 1874 he had the inexpressible grief of losing Ellen, one of his younger daughters. He suffered a stroke and died in 1875.

Margaret and Joseph Woods, brother and sister, sat on the two single side seats. She is remembered as a pretty little old lady with blue eyes who, like most of the other women, always wore a black silk Quaker bonnet. They had a lady companion, Susan Mannington, large and motherly, who seemed to make them very comfortable.

Joseph Woods was born in 1776 at Stoke Newington. He was mainly self-taught, but became proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, and modern Greek. He studied to be an architect, but having little business or technical ability he proved unsuccessful. He designed Clissold Park House for his uncle Jonathan Hoare, but in his design for the Commercial Salerooms in Mincing Lane he miscalculated the strength of some iron trestles and had to bear the cost of their replacement.

In 1806 he formed the London Architectural Society and he became its first president. He studied geology and botany in his spare time, and became the leading authority on British Roses. In 1833 he retired from architecture and settled at Lewes, devoting himself mainly to botany. In 1850 he published the Tourists' Flora, a Descriptive Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns of the British islands, Prance, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and the Italian Islands. He discovered several species of plant not previously noticed in Britain, and in his honour Robert Brown gave the name Woodsia to a rare and beautiful genus of British ferns.

When over 80 years of age he amused himself by finishing some of his early architectural sketches as presents to his friends and he was known as an exceptionally brilliant chess player. Joseph Woods died, unmarried, in 1864 in his house at 8 Priory Crescent, and is buried in front of the Meeting House.

After the death of Joseph Woods the side seat was occupied by Charles Sturt, the Postmaster of East Hoathly, who drove the nine or ten miles to Lewes in his pony cart each First Day. Catherine Taylor remembered him as a little old man, with long white hair and a gentle face, who came striding into Meeting. He had a broad-brimmed hat and a green coat which he wore over a neat grey suit.

Charles Sturt and his sister outside
East Hoathly Post Office

His duties as a postmaster and his salary were small, and he eked out a living by cultivating his bit of ground and selling the produce. He was a Convinced Friend (that is, he had become a Quaker by conversion, unlike most of the others, who were birthright members). He had little education, but he had read and pondered much on his Bible, on the writings of George Fox and of other early Friends. He used to keep up a running conversation on points of doctrine. For a while he was reluctant to speak in Meeting, except at Yearly Meeting time when the ministers were away. The children enjoyed his words, perhaps finding him easier to understand than they found the recorded ministers.

Sometimes he would come to dine with the Taylors, and when his plate was handed to him he would spread his handkerchief over his knees, put his plate on it and start to eat. The children never laughed at him as they felt the influence of his sweet and quiet spirit. Sometimes he would send their mother a basket of fruit from his garden, and now and again he would write her a letter on a large old fashioned sheet of notepaper on the subject of the Christian bringing up of her children, which made her smile, but they all loved the old man.

A much younger minister was Charlotte Smith, a widow who came to Lewes in order that her one child, Effie should attend school as a day-scholar. The children liked her sermons, remembering one on "What have they seen in thy house?", using Hezekiah's mistake in display to the spies as a parable about the impression a truly Christian home should make on visitors. (To the confusion of everyone there were two Charlotte Smiths at the meeting, Charlotte Elizabeth Smith and Charlotte Josephine Smith, living together at a house called Green Bank in Rotten Row.)

In the ministers gallery were Sarah Rickman and Mary Ann Godlee, the sister of Burwood Godlee. They had retired from their school, and they had moved to the upper part of a house in Albion Street. Sarah Rickman was very clever with her hands. They had in their parlour a cardboard model of the Coliseum, which she had made, and at one time she had made a pair of high lace boots for a doll, turned out as beautifully as by any shoe maker. She was a great joy to the children with her varied interests; beautiful carving, and little figures and flowers she cut out of white paper for them with scissors, without drawing any outline, yet they were exquisite works of art.

Richard Peters Rickman, in the front row, was a rather forbidding looking old gentleman. Although in poor health he went to London Yearly Meeting in 1876. He was at both the preliminary sittings of Ministers and Elders, but the next day he became so ill that he was only just able to reach his house in Lewes. After three hours, with a mind clear and peaceful, he breathed his last. Obituaries of other Friends show that such occurrences were not uncommon.

Of his eight sisters Rachel, Sarah and Matilda outlived him. Their family home was Wellingham House which was bought by their father, John Rickman, in 1818. Visitors from Lewes sometimes came up the river, landing by a small wood which was a favourite picnic spot. The path from the wood led through the fields, past several summerhouses, to the house. One of these summerhouses survives just as they left it. Underneath is a grotto which the children decorated with shells and pieces of coloured glass. outside is a flight of steps to the summerhouse which has four windows. The centre panes of glass are coloured. If you looked through the blue, it seemed as if everything was covered with snow. The green turned the landscape into spring. The red glowed like summer, and the orange pane as if the harvest was just ready to be gathered in. The house is altered, with new wings added on either side, but the character of it is little changed.

The Summerhouse at Wellingham

Rachel Rickman had been born in Lewes, but was sent to school at York and Croydon. She returned home at the age of fourteen to help her mother with the large family, and moved to Wellingham with them when she was nineteen. She lived with her brother and a cousin for a while at Hastings, but returned home in 1835. For a while she and her sister Priscilla were concerned about bad housing at Ringmer. They had cottages built near the church to be let at low rents. In 1883 Rachel and Sarah provided a wheel pump (which still works) and pump house for the well on Ringmer Village Green for the use of the inhabitants of Ringmer, and for wayfarers, for ever.

Soon after her return home her sight began to fail, and in a few years she could read only embossed type, and she carried on her extensive correspondence by means of movable bars. She was called as a minister at an early age, but was not recorded as such until 1837. Later on Matilda also became blind, and after the death of their father and Priscilla they employed a young companion, Ellen Bellerby, to read aloud to them. You would never have known from their actions or speech, that the sisters were blind. They always talked as if they saw clearly. Catherine Taylor was visiting there one evening with a number of friends, and as they sat at tea on their lawn, Rachel Rickman, one of the blind sisters said, "Now I want to show you something." So she led the way through their large kitchen garden to the edge of one of their fields where the wheat stood golden in the sunlight ready to be cut. Among the wheat grew hundreds of scarlet poppies. "Now", she said, "Isn't that a beautiful sight?".

John Rickman had two other daughters. Emily, who was the wife of Isaac Grey Bass, who with Marriage Wallis and Daniel Hack founded a high class wholesale and retail grocery under the name of Bass, Wallis and Hack in Market Street, Brighton. The other daughter, Benjamina, married Edward Lucas, of Luton, and became the grandmother of E.V. Lucas of literary fame.

Richard Peters Rickman of The Friars had a sister, Mary Hannah (1835-1905) who lived in The Grey House, which was demolished when Spences Field was built. (A boundary stone with the initials MHR is still visible on Malling Hill just outside 'Wayside'). Once a year on Twelfth Night she invited all of the children to her house for tea. Catherine Taylor recalled that:-

On the afternoon of the day, we were washed, brushed and dressed in our best and sent off with many admonitions as to behaviour, and told "not to eat too much cake." When we arrived, we sat down in the comfortable dining room to tea, our gracious hostess at the head of the table treating us just as if we had been grown up company, with her silent father at the other end. In one wall of the dining room had been made a large hole in which had been placed the stuffed head of a tiger, the opening in front being covered with glass and around the head had been placed imitation grasses and bulrushes, so that it looked as if the tiger was just coming out of his den. Mary Hannah Rickman told us she had bought it at an auction. She had wished to have the lion's head that was offered for sale at the same auction, but someone else had got that.

After tea where we had done full justice to all the good things including the Twelfth Night cake, the table was pushed on one side and we played some active games. One year I remember it was Brush. You stood the hearth brush in the middle of the floor and joined hands in a circle, and the fun lay in trying to make your neighbour knock it down and in keeping yourself from being pulled over it. Our hostess's silken skirts were long and voluminous, and I remember she took the coloured tablecloth off the table and pinned it tightly round herself, or else she would have no chance. After the romp we would go upstairs into the well lighted drawing room and play Lotto or Dominoes until about eight o'clock, when a supper of almonds and raisins, oranges, figs, etc., was brought up, after which she went with us into the bedroom and we put on our coats and bonnets. As we dressed alike she wondered how we would know our coats apart, and we told her that our mother had worked an initial into the waist lining. After this we went gaily home carrying with us the ornaments from the cake.

Drawing by C Walter Hodges

As an old lady one of her chief concerns was to rescue horses which had been ill-treated, or which were too old to work. They grazed in the fields surrounding the Grey House, and eventually, over the grave of her favourite horse, Charlie, she raised a large mound with a concrete centre and a winding path up to a seat at the top. It is strange that a Quaker horse should be so honoured when Quaker humans were commemorated only by small uniform grave-stones.

The Rickmans' House and the mound
Part of a post card

When Sarah Rickman and Mary Ann Godlee gave up their school in The Friars it was taken over by Miriam, Mary and Josephine Dymond of Exeter, relatives of Jonathan Dymond whose Essays on Christian ethics had for a time almost the authority of the Book of Discipline. Although the number of pupils appears never to have exceeded the twenties, the school's reputation was considerable. Benjamin and Candia Cadbury of Birmingham, for example, sent two of their daughters there. One of their pupils remembered the Dymonds as capable and delightful women and wrote that few, if any, of their pupils can have left that school without having felt their gentle yet powerful influence, their loving and beautiful sympathy. They most surely brought away with them a recollection of many happy days spent in that beautiful country among the Sussex Downs, and of walks and glad converse with their girl friends.

Eventually the Dymonds returned to Exeter, and their place was taken by Rachel Speciall. in 1855 she was joined by Mary and Catherine Trusted. (A pupil noted the Dickensian appropriateness of their names, but refrained from commenting on that of their friend, the Reverend Arthur Perfect!)

A prospectus for the school survives, which reads as follows:-

Boarding School for the Daughters of Friends Lewes, Sussex

Terms
For Board and English Education  £35.0.0 per Annum
Washing                            2.0.0    "  "
Drawing                            4.0.0    "  "
The Latin Language                 3.0.0    "  "
French & German each               4.0.0    "  "

The French and German Languages are taught by Natives of the respective Countries, and Drawing by an efficient Master. English books are provided at the expense of the Proprietors. A vacation of Six Weeks in Summer, and Three Weeks in Winter, but pupils may remain at the School during the latter if preferred. Three months' notice, or payment for that time, is expected previous to removal of a pupil. Application for the admission of children may be made to the Superintendent, or to Daniel Pryor Hack, Brighton, Isaac Gray Bass, do, Burwood Godlee, Lewes, to whom all remittances may be made direct, or they may be paid at the London & County Bank, 21 Lombard Street, to the credit of Friends' School, Lewes.

Rachel Speciall was joined by her sister Mary Ann who had been educated at E. and A. Rickman's school at Rochester, and had taught at the Friends' school at Ackworth. Catherine Trusted was born in 1824. She had much difficulty in mastering spelling and the multiplication table. After a care-free childhood she became very determined to overcome any obstacles. She abandoned reading fiction since the stories interfered with her thoughts in meeting, and she was observed later in life with a Latin Grammar to hand as she did the housework. Considering time as one of the most important talents entrusted to their care, she thought much of punctuality, and would encourage her pupils when leaving school for the greater freedom of home, to make for themselves a plan for each day, and yet always keep themselves ready to fall in with those of others when it seemed best. Accounts kept under her care were spoken of as "a curiosity for exactness;" it was her practice to write a letter for every one received. Her first job was as a governess, and for a while she worked in Emilie Schnell's school in Brighton before moving to Ackworth where she enjoyed the refined and intellectual companionship of Mary Ann Speciall.

Maude Robinson, a local authoress very popular earlier this century, wrote:-

Never did parents specially entrust their children to more utterly conscientious and kindly teachers than those three Quaker ladies, dressed in the primmest, neatest gowns, who always addressed their pupils as "thee" and "thou."

Drawing by C Walter Hodges

It was a very different Lewes in the seventies. Tar-barrels were rolled down the street in the most irresponsible way, and a big bonfire lit before the Town Hall on November the fifth. In that open space and along the street the Cattle Market was held, leaving it sadly unclean.

In 1874 there was a severe outbreak of fever in Lewes and the school was removed to Brighton, where, rather more than two years later, Rachel Speciall died, and it was closed. During the busy days of school-keeping the sisters had been careful to keep up their interest in outside work. Mary Trusted much enjoyed her position as Secretary to a small Girls Home (in South Street, on a site lately occupied by the Odeon car park), at Delap Hall, named after Dr. Delap, a John Aubrey-like character who lived there until 1812. Mary Trusted also showed a warm interest in the Bible Society. She took her share in the Meetings for Discipline in her district, and until within a few years of her death she was Secretary to the Lewes branch of the Missionary Helpers Union. She was diligent in sewing and knitting for others, and, although rather short-sighted she made her own Quaker caps until within a few months of her death. Among the many other interests which engaged Catherine Trusted after her return to Lewes was a small Band of Hope at the workhouse, in which she taught the boys the advantages of total abstinence, especially from its physiological side.

During the 1870's there was a strong evangelical movement within the society, and Maude Robinson recalls:-

I think, during my second autumn at school there was something of a revival in the meeting, and a great desire that we young things should share in the faith that was so lovingly preached to us. But it was not the words of local Friends that brought Life's great message to me. One Wednesday morning, a Friend visiting meetings was present, perhaps one of the "Not mighty or noble," but as he spoke I saw for the first time that I was called to bring my sins to the foot of the Cross and devote my life to the best of Masters. I went through my lessons with the French master that afternoon like one in a dream, and in the solitary time of "meditations", as I knelt by the window looking out over the hills, which I used to so much enjoy, I definitely devoted my life to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in spite of many failures and unfaithfulness I have never drawn back.

Second in the ministers gallery sat Caleb Rickman Kemp, who had been born in 1836. His father, Grover Kemp, was John Glaisyer's partner at Brighton. Caleb Kemp, after two year's work in a drapers shop, moved to Mitcham where he learned the craft of flour-milling. He attended Croydon Meeting where he was strongly influenced by Peter Bedford. At the age of 17, unusually young, he began to speak in Meeting. "I should not think", he wrote in his journal, "that anyone ever entered upon the work of the ministry with a deeper feeling of poverty, or with less acquaintance with the truths contained in the Holy Bible, than myself; often do I feel as if a discouraging word would upset me altogether." He was recorded a Minister at the age of 21, an almost exceptional occurrence. Jonathan Hodgkin wrote: "There are those among us who can remember looking upon Caleb Kemp with wonder as the only member of the Society who was recorded a Minister at an early age."

Later that year he joined his father in a religious visit to the West Indies. They visited many of the islands, holding meetings with both white and coloured people in Antigua, Montserrat, Nevis, St Kitts, Barbados, Granada and Trinidad, thus beginning his life-long interest in the welfare of the coloured population of the West Indies and his connection with the Anti-Slavery Society, on whose committee he served for twenty-seven years.

When he returned he was invited to join his cousins in the old established lime-burning, corn and coal business of Rickman and Company at Lewes, taking the place previously held in the firm by his cousin Richard Rickman. While he was considering this he attended a week day meeting of which he wrote, "Our friend John Hodgkin is away from Lewes and I had to sit first in the gallery; a position I had rarely occupied; and one that brings a feeling of weight over my mind not easy to describe - I was the youngest at meeting on my side."

He became a partner in the company, together with John Clay Lucas and George Newington. Newington was not a Friend, although his wife and children were members of the Meeting. Caleb Kemp records in his journal that Richard Rickman owned a house at the bottom of the High Street. it was occupied by Doctor Macrae, but the lease was coming to an end. Rickman offered the house to his friend, and Caleb Kemp accepted, but later, considering that removal would be a hardship to Macrae, asked to be released from his agreement. In the following spring he was married to Jane Morland of Croydon. Her family originated the Morland sheepskin business, and is intermarried with the Clarks, also Quakers, whose shoe business still thrives.

For nearly half a century Caleb and Jane Kemp lived at Lewes, the greater part of the time, since 1865, in a house in Rotten Row, designed for them by William Beck and called Bedford Lodge in honour of Peter Bedford who had died in the previous year. It was not long after the removal to Bedford Lodge that Grover Kemp also passed away. Caleb Kemp wrote in his journal: "I do not believe that a single colourable act can be pointed to, in the whole of my father's life, or that he made a single enemy."

One of his friends wrote The home of Lewes became a centre of much genial hospitality. He was an excellent story-teller, and possessed a great store of racy anecdotes with which to entertain his many guests.' Maude Robinson remembered, 'How kind he was to the shy schoolgirls, who went in groups to tea at his house, in playing games with US. I remember once in "Clumps" he chose to be questioned on the fish weathercock on Southover Church, and it was so much larger than we had imagined that we were completely puzzled.

Those who knew him only in meeting might have found those statements strange: in his religion he was utterly serious, but in other situations his tolerance and his sense of humour made him very popular. No one, with the possible exception of his wife, saw his journal, but it now reveals a mischievous sense of humour on subjects which, publicly, even he had to treat seriously.

Like many others in the meeting he was concerned with temperance, and this subject throws some light on the strange contrast between legalistic rigidity and complete personal freedom which still exists in the Society today. Testimonies held from the beginning were extraordinarily difficult to change, even if the circumstances had altered to the point where they threatened the life of the Society. In 1874 Yearly Meeting warned Friends of the evils of drink, but, while it noted regretfully that some Friends were still working in the trade, it would not instruct them to leave it.

On the other hand there was still an absolute prohibition on music, rigidly adhered to by the older Friends, but quietly ignored by the younger ones. When the YMCA began in Lewes it used the Meeting House. Its first secretary was Joseph Hopkins, a farmer who retired in 1875 to devote himself to this work. He was soon recorded a minister, and became clerk of the preparative meeting. In 1883 Richard Peters Rickman mentioned that the YMCA had dared to use a harmonium on premises belonging to Friends and the Meeting required Joseph Hopkins to tell his own committee that the practice should not be repeated. Technically Richard Peters Rickman was right, but attempts of this kind to uphold the old testimonies did great harm to the Society. He was not alone in this: Burwood Godlee who was Vice-Chairman and Treasurer of the Lewes Dispensary was conspicuously absent from a charity concert in its aid, as late as 1881.

Many Friends belonged to the Movement for the Ban of the Sale of Intoxicating Liquor on Sunday, the Lewes Total Abstinence Society, the British Womens Temperance Association and the Blue Ribbon Society. Many upheld the new testimony to the value of temperance in more sympathetic ways.

Eliza Payne, with her own money, paid for the building of the British Workmans Institute in Little East Street, A public house without intoxicants open daily from six to ten. Coffee, refreshments and entertaining games. Good Templar's Lodges are held here. The building is the property of Miss Payne and was built by that lady to encourage temperance. The building was recently a Baptist chapel, and is now converted into flats.

Drawing by C Walter Hodges

When a Coffee Tavern was opened in the town, Burwood Godlee contributed a hundred weight of coffee and Caleb Kemp gave a hundred weight of coal. Caleb Kemp, with other friends, took part in many activities which brought them into social contact with outsiders, activities which would have been forbidden to the stricter Friends a few years before. They attended the Mechanics Institute, the Workmans Institute, the Chess Club, poetry evenings, the Sussex Archaeological Society, and the Monday Evening Club - a discussion group which numbered amongst its members only those with considerable wealth or status.

One substantial new departure was their involvement in local politics. In 1881 the Borough of Lewes received its Incorporation Act. Caleb Kemp was the only Quaker to stand for election. His election address reads:

Ladies and Gentlemen,
It was my intention to have taken no part in the present municipal contest - except that of casting my vote, but having, with others, received a requisition influentially signed by nearly 300 ratepayers, asking me to become a candidate for the Council, I have decided, upon further consideration, to place my services at the disposal of the ratepayers, and I now solicit their confidence and support. In doing so I am not insensible to the prior claims of those gentlemen - of whom some are now before the constituency as candidates - who have heretofore held office.

I am, ladies and gentlemen,
Yours very respectfully,
Caleb R. Kemp

He was immediately made an alderman, and two years later was elected Mayor, in spite of the Conservative majority on the Council and his openly Liberal politics.

He wrote in his journal:-

I went to the inaugural dinner, but such things are not in my line. And how I should manage to be Mayor I don't see. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. At the meeting of the Council I took some part, and felt at home in the work. Many considerations present themselves: one is that we should not make our scruples or our religious tastes too prominent, so as to attract notice to ourselves. Another is that we should take things that come to us, simply. In both of these I have much to learn.

Photograph by Reeves of Lewes

I was unanimously elected with very nice feeling on the part of my colleagues. At the dinner all went nicely. My having taken out 'Army and Navy' [from the toast] and put in 'Literature, Science and Art' was pleasantly alluded to.

On First Day I drove to Brighton, and preached at some length in their morning meeting. I brought Marriage Wallis back with me, and at three o'clock we attended at our Meeting-house and met the Corporation in order publicly to acknowledge out dependence upon Almighty God, and unitedly to seek His blessing on our Municipal year. We walked in procession from the Town Hall. The place was crowded. I offered prayer in reference to the Council, its work, and the town generally. J. G. Hopkins read very well the twelfth and thirteenth of Romans; and M. Wallis spoke well and practically from 'Diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.' He then offered prayer. I feeling humbled and thankful, and others I know, and as far as I know, all satisfied. As a magistrate his help was much valued. After Burwood Godlee he was the only teetotaller, the only nonconformist, and the only man engaged in what is technically called trade on the Lewes bench.

He understood the more conventional worship of the other churches, as an incident from 1883 relating to the Tabernacle indicates.

The Congregational Minister here was taken ill on Seventh day night - not alarmingly, but so as to cause his leaving the house and preaching on First day quite out of the question. His wife - a friend of ours - called on me on First day morning to explain matters; to ask if I could supply her husband's place. She put it - whether the circumstances did not indicate that the Lord had a service for me. They had no one among their own people, to whom they could look - and there was no time to communicate with places at a distance. - I accepted the position - and, after an interview with the deacons, met the very interesting, large, and as it proved, very enthusiastic congregation.

Drawing from Lower's History of Lewes

In 1888 he became Clerk of the Meeting for Sufferings, an office which he held for five years. His retirement from business in 1889 gave him more leisure for such engagements; and for many years his journeys to London and back were very frequent. In 1890 he became Clerk of London Yearly Meeting, a post which he filled with power and dignity for nine years. He had been an assistant clerk for the previous eighteen years. His own statement on retiring from the Clerkship in 1899 is an illustration of the thoroughness with which he did anything he undertook: he said that since he first took his seat at the Clerk's table he had been absent only three times, and then only during his Assistant Clerkship, during his twenty-seven years of office. He was succeeded by John Morland, a relative of his wife.

Clear and decided in his judgment, he readily gathered the sense of the Meeting, and embodied it in a minute, with rapidity and with facility of expression. His careful thought of Yearly Meeting minutes did not end with the draft. As is well known, the minutes are, at the conclusion of each sitting, subjected to the scrutiny of a revision committee. But minutes requiring special care in wording often received close personal consideration in the evening, each word being carefully weighed, until, whilst maintaining intact the sense of the draft minute, the polished form which it finally assumed, satisfied its critical author. it was noteworthy how he brought the Yearly Meeting back to normal conditions when some ripple of excitement had passed over that dignified assembly. On one occasion when an address of considerable interest had been delivered, somewhat in the style of a popular orator, and the atmosphere of the Yearly Meeting seemed to have lost its wonted calm, he asked for a few moments of silence, after which he knelt in prayer. Solemnity was restored.

One of his main interests was the British and Foreign Bible Society. He had joined the committee in 1880, and in 1892 he became the chairman. It was not merely his love and reverence for the Bible which made this work dear to him, but also the fact that it brought together Christians who in other respects were separated by sectarian differences. Eventually he was made a Vice-President of the Society, and his portrait was hung on the wall of the committee room.

In 1897 he played an important part in making the Lewes Subscription Library into a free library for the whole town. The Library had existed since 1795, but it was in financial difficulties. The Public Libraries Act empowered the council to take it over, but not to pay the outstanding costs, estimated then as £200 to £300. Caleb Kemp agreed to pay off the debts and to put the building (Fitzroy House) into good repair, at a cost which he later noted to be £450, and the town accepted the library as part of the celebrations for Queen Victoria's Jubilee. A red granite tablet was unveiled to commemorate this, but Caleb Kemp was not there to see it.

He had received an invitation from the Bishop of London to be on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral at the thanksgiving service. The Mayor was pleased to think that an inhabitant of their own town and a member of the Corporation had been allotted such an important seat to witness this memorable pageant. Caleb Kemp notes with amusement in his journal that there were only 30 non-conformists present, and that the Anglicans had the lion's share of the places.

In 1905 he wrote, "How near I have missed being Sir Caleb I do not know - But it has just come to my knowledge that a year ago Lord Northampton did his 'best' to induce the Prime Minister to recommend me for a knighthood in connection with the centenary of the B & F B Society - Lord Northampton says that he at one time thought he had succeeded - "but I failed" - of course the Prime Minister was a Tory - and Lord Northampton & this humble friend (myself) are firmly Liberal - whether or not that influenced the Prime Minister I do not know."

At this time he was chairman of the board of magistrates, and on November the 5th several rowdies were arrested. When Caleb Kemp heard the charges he had to advise the court that legally there was no case to answer. As a long-standing opponent of the celebrations it was greatly to his embarrassment when the crowds waiting outside for the verdict cheered him as a Friend of Bonfire.