Quaker Tapestry staff and volunteer team choose their favourite exhibits in our new series of blogs.
Lisa Moore, Quaker Tapestry Museum Operations Manager, tells us why she chose ‘Firbank Fell: George Fox Preaching’ as her favourite exhibit…
”Growing up, I spent a lot of time around Sedbergh and the surrounding area close to Firbank Fell as it’s where my Dad’s family is from. I have also been in St Andrew’s Church, which is featured in the panel on numerous occasions for family events. When I started working at the Quaker Tapestry Museum over 16 years ago, my Dad took me to Firbank Fell for the first time and I really imagined how George Fox may have felt standing there preaching to all those people hundreds of years ago. My Dad then took me to see Brigflatts Meeting House, built in 1675 which is absolutely beautiful. The whole experience of that day was quite moving and the panel which incorporates so many elements of that day and my past really holds a strong connection for me and I am very fond of it.”
About the panel
This panel records two events in 1652. June 9th was the time of the hiring fair in Sedbergh, we see the figure of George Fox, speaking to a crowd of people. In the background is Sedbergh church, from which many of the congregation had emerged to listen to George Fox. As he preached outside the ‘steeple house’ he was asked why he didn’t go inside the church to preach. He replied that a steeple house was not the church, but the people to whom Christ was the head.
June 13th, Fox himself described what happened;
‘While others were gone to dinner, I went to a brook, got a little water, and then came and sat down on the top of a rock hard by the chapel. In the afternoon the people gathered about me, with several of their preachers. It was judged there were above a thousand people; to whom I declared God’s everlasting truth and Word of life freely and largely for about the space of three hours.’
Fox declared “Keep your feet upon the top of the mountain and sound deep to that of God in everyone” stressing that religion must permeate the whole of life, that consecrated buildings were an irrelevance and that there was no need of priests to stand as mediator or interpreter between the individual man or woman and God.
If you climb Firbank Fell, you will find a plaque on the side of a rock called Fox’s Pulpit, the inscription on the plaque begins with ‘Let your lives speak’ to mark the message from Fox that day in 1652.
Many of those who gathered on Firbank Fell were ‘seekers’, men and women who were in sympathy with Fox and who received his message gladly and enthusiastically, consequently this event is sometimes considered the beginning of the Friends movement. Fox then travelled to Ulverston and to Swarthmoor Hall where he met the family of Judge and Margaret Fell – a meeting of great importance for the Society of Friends.
About the stitches
Designed by Anne Wynn-Wilson (founder of the Quaker Tapestry) and Joe McCrum, this panel was partly embroidered by Anne herself, experimenting with the size of figures, how large, how small; showing a superb use of the Bayeux technique in the boots, jacket and shirt. The trousers and the hair show how the first stage of Bayeux, tied down with freely embroidered stem, split and chain stitch could add to the three dimensional effect. Anne’s husband, David, standing in his gardening trousers provided a pattern for the creases and folds of the leather breeches always worn by Fox, who was, indeed, known as “the man in the leather breeches”
The small vignette of the shepherds and their eminently strokeable dogs is an example of Anne’s teaching…
“You must feel, think and stroke the dog, convey a person’s thought in their expression and stance, and then your embroidery will come to life”
The trees with their distinctive triangular shapes were designed from a photograph taken from Fox’s Pulpit on Firbank Fell and show the stunted growth of the hawthorn bushes and trees being sculpted by the winds which whistle over the Cumbrian fells. The church and the hills are good examples of the use of the wonderful background material, allowing it to stand for stones, walls, and the fells, without the need for elaborate embroidery.
You can view ‘Firbank Fell: George Fox Preaching’, and other panels, here at Quaker Tapestry Museum, Kendal or view all 77 panels on our website
Buying lovely things from us directly supports our charitable work, thank you
Postcards of this, and other panels, are available for you to keep or send.
Your purchase helps us to preserve and exhibit one of the world’s largest community embroideries and in sharing its stories, history and stitches for all to enjoy.
Dear Lisa Moore,
Quaker Tapestry Museum Operations Manager,
This is why I would chose the Firbank Fell tapestry.
My Smithson family first became Quakers in the 1700s. I was born in April 1930 and became a birthright Quaker in Jordans Meeting in 1938.
With my 95 year of memory I will try and give you some historical ‘stepping stones’ over those years, that I hope will be of interest to you.
The first Smithson Quaker was John Smithson b. Calbeck in 1719; Married Isabel Walker at Brigflats QMH March 1751. Their son Joshua owned Kakermill Farm at Preston Patrick.
Joseph Smithson of Plumpton Cottage Nr. Ulverston was apprenticed to a Taylor, eventually decide that he would rather make the cloth than cut it up (!) he walked across the Pennines to Halifax to start a Worsted Mill, his son was my grandfather Charles Holmes Smithson and my father was Michael Satterthwaite Smithson b. 1898. At the age of 17 he joined the FAU and having been brought up ‘Through the Mill, was mechanically minded and was driving an ambulance on the front line in France. later serving on a French Hospital Train and then on the SS Western Australia Hospital ship. Finally at the end of WW1 he was stationed at Old Jordans just up the hill form Jordans Meeting House, that was where the FAU had its Training Centre for the South of England. It was then being used as a Clearing Centre for wounded returning to the UK.
Jordans Village had not yet been built but was in the planning stage, the firs brick laid in 1919. My father stayed South and met and married my Mother Mary E. Yarrow ans I was born in Pinner. After WW1 my father kept in touch with his FAU Friends who were establishing Jordans Village. On Easter Sunday 1936 we made a visit to Jordans and my father asked his Friends “What are you doing ith rour children for school” , the answer was “Oh we have a little school run by two Quaker ladies. So I became a weekly border from Pinner while my parents bought a piece of land in Chalfont St Giles, the next village, and built a house there in 1937. I have been a Member of Jordans Meeting, except when I worked as an Agricultural Engineer overseas, mostly in developing countries from 1953 to 1978. I returned and Lived in Jordans Village from 1980 to 2002 when I inherited the Chalfont St Giles home.
My wife Susanna Loveday Morley married in 1956. Her Grandfather Frank Morley a Quaker from Woodbridge Meeting was one of the first Quakers to go to University.
https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Morley/
After graduating at Cambridge, he was interviewed at Old Jordans and was offered the post of Mathematics Professor at Haverford College in Pensylvania. His son Frances V. Morley; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Vigor_Morley
was born in Baltimore and with his two brothers were Rhodes Scholars at Oxford, cycling occasionally from Oxford to go to Meeting at Jordans. Staying and marrying in
the UK finally living in Jordans, where I met Susanna.
I do hop that some of this is of interest.
Sue (Susanna) and I have visited your museum many times over the years and have life membership. Sue died peacefully in December 2023
What a fascinating family history, thank you for sharing this with us and supporting us with your membership.