| Description | The establishment of a meeting at Selly Oak had its origins in the development of Selly Oak Institute which had been built in 1894 as a gift from George Cadbury (1839-1922), who had already donated institutes at Stirchley and Northfield. He was heavily involved with the adult education movement based at Severn Street and when class sizes grew to such an extent that there was insufficient space for them to meet at Severn St., some moved into the suburbs, later becoming established in Friends' Institutes. A branch of Class XIV, of which he was teacher, moved to Selly Oak in 1882 and from 1895 met at the Institute. The Christian Society had been holding non-denominational meetings for worship in the area since 1879, at the Workman's Hall, Elliott Road until it too moved to the Institute. Members of Class XIV's evening meeting at the Institute expressed an interest in establishing a Quaker meeting in Selly Oak. With help from Stirchley meeting, and in particular from Edward Cadbury (1873-1948), an allowed meeting started in 1895, and this was recognised as a Preparative Meeting in 1896, at which point the meeting had 9 members, 36 associates who attended the Evening meeting and 27 children. Edward Cadbury transferred his membership to Selly Oak in 1897.
In the 1920s, it was increasingly felt that there was a need for the meeting to move from the room it used in Selly Oak Institute into its own premises. In 1925, an opportunity arose to purchase land between Langley Rd. and Bristol Rd. and a number of schemes were established to raise money to do so, and donations were made by Edward and Dorothy Cadbury. In November 1926, the new meeting house came under the ownership of the West Birmingham Friends Hall Trust, with several members of the meeting appointed to the Trust (see SF/2/1/1/8/2) an annual amount being paid to the Trust by the meeting for use of the premises. The first meeting for worship took place in January 1927.
In 1950, the arrangement with the West Birmingham Friends Hall Trust came to an end when the Warwickshire Monthly Meeting trustees became Holding Trustees and the Preparative Meeting contributed to the Monthly Meeting Building Fund, but was responsible for the running of the building.
Finance was provided by Edward Cadbury to cover the costs of laying out and maintaining gardens for the meeting house, and from the 1930s a tennis club was established on the site. By the end of the 1970s, this had fallen into disuse and the following decade it was turned into a wildlife area.
Membership was at its highest in 1955, when there were 195 members and 33 attenders. The meeting received a number of new members after the closure of Farm Street Preparative Meeting in 1985. In 2000, there were 60 members and 12 attenders.
Friends associated with Selly Oak Preparative Meeting, include Edward and Dorothy Cadbury, John Henry Barlow (first manager of the Bournville Village Trust), Ralph Barlow (also Manager of Bournville Village Trust), Rendel Harris (first director of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, Selly Oak), Herbert G. Wood (director of Woodbrooke and first Professor of Theology at the University of Birmingham), Wilfred Littleboy, Geoffrey Maw (a member of the Friends Foreign Mission Association who spent time on missionary work in Syria and India) and Maurice Creasey, Hugh Doncaster, Margaret Hobling, Margaret Worsdell and Konrad Braun, all connected with Woodbrooke and known for their work for the Society of Friends.
See SF/3 for a description of the functions of the Local/Preparative Meeting. |