Brian Good from Alton Society

Brian Good from Alton Society talks about the Quakers and the Meeting House's Blue Plaque.

Transcript

00:00Yes, I'm not actually a member of the Quakers, I'm what they call an attender, which means

00:06I turn up at the meetings and I help out as best I can, but I haven't gone through the

00:09full process of going through the induction and dealing with all the books and things.

00:15I just like what Quakers do and how they do it, you know, very nice, gentle, low-level,

00:19doing good things, and that kind of fits with what I do with the Orton Society. Most have

00:26got a society of some sort, there's one in Farnham, there's one in Petersfield, and basically

00:32the Orton Society is there to preserve the good bits of the town and help to make it

00:37get better as it evolves. So my particular role is, tends to evolve with the natural

00:43environment, so one Sunday morning a month we work in the flood meadows, doing a whole

00:49lot of conservation work down by where the River Wey starts, and that's just great fun.

00:54Fresh air, exercise, good companionship, not many people, about a dozen of us, all volunteers,

01:00and we enjoy doing that. And kind of parallel with that I'm one of the town guides, which

01:06means once a month one or two of us show groups of people around the town, talking about the

01:12history, introducing them to some of the buildings, including this one, Quaker Meeting House,

01:18and going just up the road to see the grave of Sweet Fanny Adams and explaining the story

01:22of what happened just over 150 years ago. And yeah, it's just all part of being a member

01:29of the citizens of Orton. I love it, I've lived here for 30 odd years now. Yes, it's

01:34one of those slightly tucked out of the way places that a lot of people in Orton don't

01:38even know it exists, so anything that just raises a profile and lets people know it's

01:42here, there's a story behind it, that's got to be a good thing. For example, if you go

01:48around the burial ground, the bit that's next to Orton building, there are 200 dead Quakers

01:53in there, and if you look at them, there aren't many headstones, but if you look at them you

01:57see the names Bell and Crowley, and all sorts of names associated with places in Orton.

02:04So we've got two Miss Bell's Fountains in Orton, we've got, well it used to be Crowley's

02:09Brewery before it became Wotley's, before it became something else, and now it's changed

02:14to a bakery supermarket. And yeah, it's all around you, there's history, you've just got

02:19to scratch the surface. It's marvellously non-hierarchical, because that dates from

02:23about the time of the English Civil War I suppose, when everybody was questioning absolutely

02:28everything in society. The slightly frustrating aspect is we have to discuss everything and

02:34come to consensus agreement, so we never go for a vote, we always make sure everybody

02:38agrees with everything, otherwise no decisions are made. So the fact that we decided on the

02:42wording of the blue plaque at all was a matter of some amazement to me. Well, I was asked,

02:48wearing my town guide hat, I was asked to ask the Quakers if they'd be interested in

02:52having a blue plaque, and they said, oh yes please, and then there was no money for it,

02:57so for a couple of years nothing happened, and then eventually there was a deal struck

03:01where the Quakers paid half and the Town Council paid the other half, and then we spent about

03:06three months deciding the wording of it. So it has evolved really over a period of years,

03:11but the current push to make it happen started about just after Christmas. Only half a year,

03:17we got there. Because we're kind of like-minded and more broadly the same thing, good things

03:23happen, and that's how Quakers work really.