Norton’s Quakers (NZ446221)

© Copyright Carol Rose and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The first Quaker Meeting House proper to be built in the settlement of Norton was on the site of the current affair in the year 1671. Much altered over the years, the present structure dates from 1903 when it was rebuilt in the style of the original building.

What is remarkable, though, is how the religious body itself has managed to survive at all. Whilst some sources refer to the town’s ‘comparatively peaceful history’, the Quakers have suffered anything but a quiet existence there. Born around the time of the English Civil War, the Quaker movement made enemies of both Roundhead and Royalist alike – though the former tolerated them due to Quaker sympathies among their foot soldiers.

On the Restoration in 1660, there was a severe clamp-down on the activities of the ‘obstinate men and women’ of the parish ‘who would not let down their conventicles’. King Charles II sent a party north to root out the Quakers – one Simon Townsend having his house taken (the site of the alleged activities of the dissenters). Townsend and several others were severely punished, with the period of oppression in and around the town continuing deep into the 1660s.

The record books are peppered with cases brought against the peace-loving ‘Society of Friends’ groups of this period. At the very height of the oppression, the Norton group built their first ‘official’ Meeting House on the village green in 1671. Massive fines, transportation and the like continued for those openly flouting the obligation to attend ‘national services’ in favour of their own religious gatherings, but the Quakers hung on until the ‘freer’ days following Charles II’s death in 1685. Though, in fact, an Act was passed against them as late as 1687 barring them from entry into many professions, they laid low thereafter, concentrating on social and industrial endeavours to stunning effect through the Industrial Revolution and beyond.

More information here.

Jeremiah Moore of Norton (c.NZ445220)

July 20^th 1753, died, at his house at Norton, Jeremiah Moore, esq., aged 57. He was the last of his family; and had, in the former part of his life, suffered extreme hardships, through the cruelty of his older brother; by whose means he was carried into Turkish slavery; and at the time of his brother’s death, was a common seaman in the navy, having been pressed in the Mediterranean, after he had made his escape from the Turks. When he came to his estate, he converted it into money, and settled in the north, exercising acts of goodness to all his poor neighbours, to whom he left largely. Having no relations, he bequeathed to six gentlemen, who were kind to him in his adversity, £1500 a-piece; and to his housekeeper, Mrs Ann Kendal, his executrix and residuary legatee, £3000 in trust for her son. All the legatees were enjoined to receive their legacies at his house in Norton, over a large bowl of punch, on the first of March next after his death; and they were required yearly to commemorate that day as long as they lived, it being the day he escaped from slavery.

[From The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, Volume 3, p.112, by William Hutchinson]

Walker’s Friction Match (c.NZ445189)

One of Stockton-on-Tees’ greatest claims to fame is that it was the home of the man who invented the friction match, one John Walker. The chap in question was born and died in the town, spent most of his days there and, crucially, made his invention in his little chemist shop on the town’s High Street.

Matches weren’t a new idea. The Chinese had a version of them when the British were still in the Dark Ages, and many famous names had fiddled about with the concept in Europe way before Walker was born (including Robert Boyle). However, the self-igniting friction match was something new – and the North-East is most certainly the place where it first saw light of day (as it were).

Walker was born in 1781, and was supposed to have been a surgeon. Not liking the sight of blood, he instead switched his studies to chemistry, and eventually opened up his own place in his home town. He became obsessed with the idea of obtaining fire easily and began experimenting with various concoctions – until he hit upon a successful combination of chemicals and equipment in late 1826. There are various versions of the momentous event itself, but it seems that Walker noticed that a mixture of chemicals he had been working with had hardened on a mixing-stick – and when he tried to rub them off on the hearth, the thing ignited in his hand. And thus the friction match was born.

He didn’t seem to think much of the invention. From April 1827, he sold a few dozen packets of them (complete with a sandpaper sheath through which to draw the match-stick, and called ‘Congreves’ in honour of another inventor, one Sir William Congreve), but never got round to patenting the idea. Inevitably, others copied or came up with near identical ideas in time, and the fortune-making ended up elsewhere (notably Samuel Jones’ ‘Lucifers’ from 1829).

However, John Walker seems to have done sufficiently well out of his creation to enjoy a reasonably comfortable life up to his death in 1859, aged 78. He is buried in nearby Norton.

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