Penn the Friend
Record (book): Some Records of the Early Friends in Surrey and Sussex by T.W. Marsh (Harris & Co., 1886)
WSRO ref. Lib 51
William Penn and Benjamin Hayler, oversaw the conversion of John Shaw’s timber-framed house, Little Slatter, into a permanent meeting house between 1691 and 1694. It had previously been used as one of several places of worship by Friends. Located off Oldhouse Lane in the hamlet of Coolham, at the northern end of Thakeham parish, Penn and family were regular worshippers here, it being only 4 miles north of his Warminghurst home. His daughter Letitia was married here on 20th August 1702 and laid to the rest in the adjacent burial ground in 1746. The building is commonly known in the area as the Blue Idol, probably so-named after the blue wash on the plaster infill and its period of inactivity (idle-ness) in the 18th/19th centuries. It is still used by the Society of Friends as a meeting house today (2022).
This book also has a drawing of Ifield Meeting House (below) , near Crawley, the earliest permanent meeting house in Sussex, built in 1674/75. Penn attended at least one ceremony here: the wedding of Edward Blackfan and Rebecca Crispin in October 1688.
The three illustrations are by English artist Edith Capper (1844-1917) and were probably commissioned for the book, so show both buildings around 1885-86.
Both meetings for worship, and meetings to administer Quaker affairs, were illegal at this time and so needed to be carried out in secret.
