Fox400 event at Launceston, commemorating the 400th anniversary of the birth of George Fox.
Venue: Launceston Castle
There will be a Meeting for Worship in Launceston this summer to mark George Fox’s birth 400 years ago. In 1655/56, George Fox was imprisoned for many months in Doomsdale, a dungeon that formed part of Launceston Castle. Friends will be able to see the site and join the Meeting. We hope to meet outdoors in the castle grounds, weather permitting, so Friends may wish to bring garden chairs. We hope to have alternative provision close by should the weather not be kind.
On 7th July in Launceston all Friends and Attenders (and anyone who may be interested) are invited to join a short Meeting for Worship and Exhibition at Doomsdale where George Fox was imprisoned in 1655/6. A map of the town is attached showing the Ambulance Hall, for the Exhibition and tea and coffee, and Doomsdale where the Meeting for Worship will be held at 11.00am. A new leaflet commemorating the time George Fox spent here will also be available on the day.
This is not planned as a birthday celebration but as an opportunity to remember George Fox and all the early Friends across Cornwall and Devon and of how their strength and their struggles helped establish the Religious Society of Friends here. As today’s Quakers, we have the opportunity and privilege to continue the witness for peace and justice which those early Friends began.
In helping plan this occasion, we came across a letter dated November 1990 from Beth Allan at Friends House, to our Friend Marcia Treece, then of Plymouth Meeting, about plans for celebrating the tercentenary of George Fox’s death – some her words are still powerful –
” Personally I have always felt that one of George Fox’s greatest achievements was that his death in 1691 made no difference at all to the Society of Friends. He had built up a Society in which people knew their own value and their own gifts and were able to help each other without always looking to one central figure……It was in the West Country that Fox went through some of his profoundest of experiences of suffering and of commitment…..”
