Reminiscences from Maurice Barringer Rawdon Meeting I am sorry that in Pevsner

Rawdon Meeting

I am sorry that in Pevsner’s book on the buildings of the West Riding he completely forgot, because he never visited, this Meeting House built in 1697. I can see how it happened; high stone walls and a very solid gate, obscuring path and building, blot it out from Quaker Lane. But Pevsner should have enquired. It is not to my mind a beautiful building, but I think it looked better with its ivy cloaking as I remember it, in the first few years of this century.
When I married I found I could, with pleasure, share my wife’s recollections of Meeting and its Rawdon members.
Essie and I enjoyed our recollections of various Friends who frequently spoke in Meeting, such as George Ash, whose name appears on the building intended as a Sunday (or would it be Adult) School across Quaker Lane from the Meeting House. Whenever George Ash spoke, he always brought in the two words "notwithstanding" and "nevertheless", and the subject was either Biblical Prophets or Early Friends. Or both.
I also have in mind the rather surprising occasion when an elderly female Friend arose in Meeting and sang (unaccompanied of course) through a hymn. I was in my early teens. For a "born" Friend, though a young one, this was almost a heresy. I could imagine the roof falling in. And so it very nearly did, but that was getting on for a hundred years later.

I did have an unorthodox pleasure in going to Meeting, in that there was quite a chance of seeing a mongoose, which often appeared at the window of the granary section of the Rawdon Co-Op Stores. Perhaps it liked its view of the "crocodile" of children walking past ?

I was told it was an extremely effective rat-catcher. What a Sabbath recollection!

By the way, the acoustics of the Meeting House are good. I never had any difficulty in hearing some very soft-pedal speakers. Looking back to the time when it was a "full" Meeting with the he-and-she arrangement of school and staff of getting on for 100 added to non-school, it is a great change to see the modest seating arrangement of today. The atmosphere has just the same placidity as at Briggflatts, which I have visited so many times in my Dales days, though never at worship times.

I don’t know how long the small building opposite the Meeting House served its purpose as Sunday or Adult School, but when I went back to Rawdon (though living at Ilkley) it was used by the Christian Scientists. Perhaps it still is. I have just remembered that there was once a factory close by ours at Larkfield on the hill top, operated by (presently Sir) William Cartwright, who manufactured Moorland Indigestion Tablets. He became a Christian Scientist and changed to Cake Mixtures. The change made me smile.

Rawdon Friends’ School

My two older brothers and myself had a somewhat peculiar upbringing in that though Rawdon was our home, we all went away to Ackworth to school. I expect that was because of our long family association with it, and probably to avoid any possible charge of nepotism. Both parents were at school there and my mother’s father was for a time book-keeper there. My father taught there until appointed "Superintendent" at Rawdon in 1890, and my mother was "Mistress of the Household", a grandiloquent title for a job that was really hard work; she was not nearly so easy-going as my father. It was in fact housekeeping for the whole establishment -- staff, scholars, domestics, caterers; farm supplies, school books, equipment down to the last fire bucket -- the whole issue.
And she was often quite poorly. Towards the end of the First World War she had the assistance of a girl who had been at school at Rawdon and then at Lloyd’s Bank in Leeds, and who became my wife in 1923. Essie died in 1990.
She remembered with great affection the senior Mistress of her time, a Miss Alsop, whom I remember with similar liking. And she recollected Richard Swain, the Senior Boys’ Master, and his children Norman and Barbara.
Joseph Spence Hodgson was an expert in the organising of Old Scholars’ Associations in Friends’ Schools and used to visit them accordingly and to show how important is the art of elocution. He was given to thumping his chest and shouting out "USE YOUR SOUNDING BOARD!"

Because terms and holidays were of much the same length, we three boys did not see much of Rawdon term-time operation.

I haven’t said anything about the premises, except that they were not really suitable for a school. On the eastern side was a farm owned by a certain Tom Penney whose field (one of them) ran down the length of the school playground and garden. The wall was high-wired to prevent too many cricket balls going over. From the field came the perpetual rasping sound of a corncrake, now I believe a very rare bird because of the use of mechanical farm equipment. The western wall of the playground was that of Richard Swain’s "Sunnyside" garden. The school garden was a delight with a central path bordered by gooseberry and raspberry bushes, and there was a greenhouse with a fine grapevine along under its roof. The path led right down to the gate into the cricket field. I remember the building (partly adaptation of stables) of the new Cookery School, which was then quite a novel and attractive idea. That was in the School "Yard" on the entrance from the main road.
Tom Penney kept several peacocks, although he seemed an unlikely chap to do so. One of them had the habit of flying over the high wall and alighting on the second-storey (classroom) window-sills. This caused welcome -- except for the teacher -- excitement. Thinking of birds, in very early days I used to wander frequently in John Mallinson’s (the School farmer’s) domain and got to know a quite friendly gander who was interested by my polished brass blazer buttons and tried to peck them off. I also had a firm friend in the farm dog, named Togo (after an admiral in the Russo-Japanese War). There were always cows, of course, to supply the school milk.
One other thing; rudimentary astronomy. The School possessed a telescope which enabled my father (an F. R. A. S.) to help the scholars to appreciate spectacles such as eclipses and the altering position of Saturn’s rings.
There was, of course, a devotional assembly on Sunday evenings in the Lecture Hall, which faced west and gathered magnificent sunsets through the tall windows. At the end of the Hall, but separated from it by a sliding screen was -- perhaps still is -- a small room which served as the School’s laboratory. I presume Richard Swain presided over that department. I believe he was quite an expert in Natural History. A saying of his (he was Irish) that stays in my mind was that in speaking of the woeful condition of the mining community he said, "they only come up to the light of day at night." Under the lecture hall was the boys’ workshop. This additional wing is to the right as one goes down the School Yard from the road; I believe that it was a later addition to the premises, but it carried boldly the original founding date of the School. Also under the lecture room were the two or three music rooms. Considering Friends’ attitude to music at that time, these must have been a later addition.
I never attended any of the classes, but I heard a good many of them. The repetitive technique was carried out. That’s to say the class had to repeat some statements they had just heard in unison. I don’t know whether this was truly effective or not.

Rawdon School opened on
2^nd April 1832.
The School closed in 1921.

John A.Barringer was Superintendent from
1890 to 1918.

I don’t think I have dwelt on the rather peculiar mixture of the children -- pupils -- whom I remember at the Friends’ School. They were not all Friends, but included the children of local affluent parents such as mill-owners, the odd doctor, local trades people, a bunch quite different from rather necessitous Friends and families to whom a Friends’ School was recommended, so the educative standard must have been appreciated. When more schools arrived locally, such as the Secondary School at Yeadon, there was less need for Rawdon Friends’ School, hence the abandonment in 1921.