About Thirsk Quakers


Our full name is the Religious Society of Friends, but many call us Quakers.  We call each other "Friends".  Today many but certainly not all Friends consider themselves to be Christians.

We have been meeting and worshipping on this site in Thirsk for over three hundred years

Thirsk Local Meeting is part of York Area Meeting, of Quakers in Yorkshire and of British Yearly Meeting.

In our daily lives, we seek to follow the principles of simplicity, truth, equality and peace.  We call these our Quaker Testimonies.  Some of us are also inspired by faith to work actively to promote them in the various communities in which we belong, and across society;  we call these our tested and adopted Concerns.

 

 

Quakers and many other non-conformist religious groups arose from the period of great religious upheaval which followed the splitting-off from Rome of the Catholic church in England during Henry VIII's reign and the adoption of Protestantism by his daughter Elizabeth Ist.

During the 1640s, George Fox as a young man found that worshipping Christ and God through the mediation of priests was wrong for him. He thought that the relationship should be direct between the human and the divine and spent several years travelling the country seeking his own answers whilst experiencing a dark night of the soul.  

As he travelled and talked to people his thoughts crystallised and he began to draw crowds to listen to him.  He is believed to have visited the Thirsk area around 1649.

Most famously, in 1652 shortly after receiving a vision after climbed Pendle Hill in Lancashire alone, he preached to a large crowd on Firbank Fell near Sedburgh in Cumbria at what is seen as the beginnings of the Society of Friends.  The Society grew rapidly around Lancashire and Cumbria, and within a few years across the entire country.