The Life and Work of Huntingdon Local Meeting in 2011
This year Huntingdon Local Meeting has welcomed into Membership Fran Jackson and Zoe Austin and several new attenders have joined our worshipping community. We usually have between 15 and 20 people at Meeting for Worship.
Meetings have also been held at Hinchingbrooke hospital and in a spirit of outreach, two Meetings were held in St Neots.
Work on our premises has continued to be a major concern. We spent £20,000 on thefirst phase of the renovation of the cottage and it was then re-let after standing empty for most of last year. Our tenant has recently given notice and our agent is seeking new tenants.
We have made progress dealing with the problem of damp in the Meeting room but still have considerable work to do and we are unable to carry out redecoration until such work is done. We have new insulating curtains, a gift from the family of our Friend Phyllis Gibson, who sadly is no longer able to attend Meeting and is cared for in the Cromwell clinic in Huntingdon. Several Friends visit Phyllis regularly.
The Jig-Saw Nursery who rent the Meeting House has asked to extend their hours and to have exclusive use the premises for 50 weeks of the year. We have agreed to a longer day but are unable to accept an extension to 50 weeks as this would exclude other lettings and also restrict our own use of the building.
We hold several group activities in Friends’ homes. An “Experiment with Light” group has met regularly and we plan to continue it next year. The poetry group meet monthly and share familiar and not so familiar poetry on various themes. We have studied the Swarthmore lecture and considered the implications for our Meeting and our individual lives. There have been several “At Homes” with the aim of getting to know one another better and shared lunch on some Sundays after Meeting for Worship.
We decided to open the Meeting House for coffee mornings on the two Saturdays in Quaker week and to continuewith this outreach into 2012. Although we have advertised as best we can, very few non-Friends have joined us. The meeting house was also opened, as is our wont, to cyclists taking part in the Cambridgeshire Historic Churches cycle ride.
We have made a special effort to improve the Meeting House library. We spent one day looking at all the books, deciding which we no longer wished to retain and giving away any that were of use to other churches. We plan to improve the classification and display when we redecorate the Meeting Room.
We continue to be represented at “Churches Together” and at the meetings initiated by Huntingdonshire District Council and the Bishop of Huntingdon, with a view to setting up a local Interfaith Council. In January we took part in the pulpit exchange, when Hazel Shellens preached at All Saints Church in Huntingdon and the vicar Andrew Milton joined us for Meeting for Worship. In March we hosted the “Women’s World Day of Prayer” in the Meeting House and several Friends took part.
During the course of the year the Advices and Queries have been read regularly in Meeting for Worship. We have sent representatives to Area Meetings and individual Friends have attended workshops including the “Cascade Workshop on Safeguarding,” the Meeting for Worship and Witness, “Two Sides of the Coin,” at Hartington Grove Meeting House and the “Women in Prison” meetings also at Hartington Grove.
Three Friends from this Meeting continue to visit women in Peterborough prison as Quaker Chaplaincy volunteers and one Friend visits the prison weekly to assist the Chaplaincy team wherever she can. Two other Friends are regular participants in the weekly meeting for worship in Littlehey prison.
Premises Committee is well aware of our need to conform to all relevant Health and Safety legislation and all those having direct contact with children and young people have undergone CRB checks.
Mary Cozens and Bunty Walsh
Co-Clerks December 2011