| Description | A Quaker meeting was first established in Stourbridge in 1662, with a meeting house being erected in 1666 on a path off Queen Street. In 1688 a building and burial ground was leased to the Religious Society of Friends by Ambrose Crowley, a local ironmaster, as a meeting house. This meeting house, now located on Scott Street, is still in use today.
As in other areas, Friends were subjected to persecution. In 1674, Sarah Reynolds was sent to prison for refusing to contribute to the cost of church repairs and in 1684 Ezekiell and Mary Partridge, Hannah Reynolds, Richard Jones, Edward Ford, Sarah Reynolds and Ambrose Crowley were excommunicated for non-attendance at church.
Stourbridge Preparative was part of Chadwick Monthly Meeting until it transferred to Warwickshire North Monthly Meeting in 1819. It was united with Dudley Preparative Meeting in 1849, becoming Stourbridge and Dudley Preparative Meeting, having shared some meetings in the several years preceding this (see SF/3/25). From 1890, it reverted to Stourbridge Preparative Meeting, when a meeting was revived at Dudley. In 1992, Dudley Preparative Meeting once again amalgamated with Stourbridge meeting, subsequently re-establishing itself but once more uniting with Stourbridge at the end of 2014.
See SF/3 for a description of the functions of the Local/Preparative Meeting. |