| Description | The meeting at Cotteridge was established in 1901 by a group of Friends from the Bournville meeting based at the Friends Institute in Hazelwell Street, Stirchley. They first met in Cotteridge at the Friends Hall which was built that year and was owned by the West Birmingham Friends Trust established by George Cadbury. In 1905, the meeting became an allowed meeting, and the Friends transferred their membership from Bournville Meeting to Cotteridge Meeting. It became a Preparative Meeting in 1906. By 1908, the congregation numbered 71 and consisted of members, attenders (non-members) and associates (non-members and non-attenders who attended the evening meeting for worship which was a mission meeting aimed at attracting those who wished to convert to Quakerism). Prior to the First World War, attendance at the evening meeting reached 80-120 people, but there were concerns that few of these actually became members of the Religious Society of Friends.
By 1909, a number of groups had been established including a successful children's Sunday School, with over one hundred children attending and 12 teachers providing non-denominational teaching based on the Bible, a Band of Hope with 80 young members, and a Girls' Social Club, but by 1924 there were concerns that such initiatives as the Sunday School did not retain many local children or reflect the character of the Society of Friends
Initially the meeting was run by a Standing Committee which was responsible for considering the applications of associates, revising the list of readers for the evening meeting and preparing reports to the Quarterly Congregational Meeting, but from October 1909, it was decided to replace it with three committees: the Evening Meeting Committee, the Finance and Premises Committee and the Children's Committee. A Children's meeting was established from February 1915 for younger children and it continued to function until at least 1985.
In 1950, the meeting house was transferred from the West Birmingham Hall Trust to Warwickshire Monthly Meeting Trustees and a premises committee was appointed. A new meeting house was built on the same site and opened in 1964.
Members attached to this meeting included, among others:
Ethel Impey, who was a suffragette and an active member of the 'Women's Social and Political Union' and her husband, Francis Impey; Adeline Viccars, who in 1923 prompted the setting up of a movement to send food parcels to Germany: Harold Watts, who established the 'Birmingham Association for the Relief of Distressed Areas' which aimed to help areas affected by unemployment in the 1920s-30s; Horace G. Alexander, a member of staff at Woodbrooke; John Hoyland also a member of staff at Woodbrooke, Horace Holder who had been in China on behalf of the Friends Service Council ; Harrison Barrow.
See SF/3 for a description of the functions of the Local/Preparative Meeting. |