Sworders auction lots that highlight Stansted’s role as a powerful centre for Quakers

Essex was a stronghold of nonconformism long before the days of Quakers, writes Elizabeth Lardner. The north of the county had been a centre of Lollardy and its congregations were quick to display their dissatisfaction with the established church.

So, when the Quaker movement, founded in around 1652 by Cumbrian preacher George Fox, began to spread from its roots in the north-west of England, its powerful message of returning to a simpler Christianity found a receptive audience in Essex.

A monthly meeting was established in Sawbridgeworth as early as 1656, while Fox himself visited Bishop’s Stortford in 1665, writing in his journal: “Then we rode to Bishop’s Stortford where some were convinced.”

In his book The Quakers in English Society, 1650-1725, Adrian Davies demonstrates that, in the early days at least, members of the Religious Society of Friends were at odds with much of society. Their refusal to attend church, have children baptised or doff their hats to any man led to jail sentences and rioting.

Yet, with time – and the 1689 passage of the Act of Toleration that allowed for freedom of conscience – Quakers became fully integrated into the villages and hamlets of Essex.

Respected for their integrity in social and business matters – and prepared to moderate once extreme theological positions – many Friends assumed positions of great responsibility and respectability in the local community.

In the decades after the Restoration, the parish of Stansted Mountfitchet in particular became a powerful centre for the Quakers and other Independents.

Quaker meetings are first recorded here in 1696, and by 1703 land on Conygree Wood had been acquired for a Quaker burial ground.

While the town’s first meetings were probably held in a timber-framed house or farm building, a second lease agreement of 1735 references a Meeting House.

Among the most prominent local Quaker dynasties was the Day family. John Day was among those who signed the lease on the cemetery plot, where there is a collective memorial stone for members of the family, with death dates ranging from 1712 to 1796.

As early as the reign of Queen Anne, the Days’ property holdings had the makings of a considerable country estate.

Included in Sworders’ Books, Manuscripts, Autographs and Maps sale that runs online from October 18 to 27 are two rare printed and hand-coloured plans detailing the tracts of land and buildings in the area owned by Samuel Day at the turn of the 18th century.

One, dated 1703, carefully documents his acreage in the parishes of Stansted Mountfitchet, Birchanger and Ugley – including land on what is today Stansted high street.

The other plan (undated but likely produced at the same time) is titled “A Plan of Samuel Days House Yard Gardens and Orchard, situated in the Parish of Stansted in Essex”.

Probably produced as legal documents for the Day family to record property ownership, they carry an estimate of £800-£1,200.