On 29-30 June 2024, 15 young people and adult volunteers headed to the newly renovated Lewes Quaker Meeting for our first London Link Group residential event of the year.
Most of us met at Victoria station at 9am on Saturday and took a train to Lewes, with a few others making their way directly to Lewes Quaker Meeting. There has been a Quaker Meeting in Lewes since 1655 (!) and the meeting house was built in 1784.
We played games to get to know each other, aided by some tennis ball catching practice, and took a look around the meeting house to work out where we were going to be sleeping. Once we had established names we assigned secret friends for the weekend.
After lunch, we went to the Railway Land nature reserve, and played frisbee in the sunshine. There were a few hours to explore Lewes, when some people went charity shopping, and others bought things for their secret friend, or went back to the meeting house to sing songs and play card games.
We had a tasty dinner of takeaway pizzas and salads, and followed this up with a mighty, loosely Quaker-themed quiz! This included a picture round in which we had to identify whether a building was a current Quaker meeting house or not. Another question required each team to list as many facts as they could about an individual on the next team. The hilarious “false or true” round required us to work out what kind of Fox’s party ring biscuit was the favourite of George Fox, who would have been 400 this year. We finished the day with epilogue and hot chocolate/herbal tea before bedding down on the meeting house floor.
On Sunday, we joined Lewes Quakers for their meeting for worship. The children’s meeting made origami tulips. We had a shared lunch of quiche and salads before heading for the train back to London, having had a fun and fulfilling weekend among Friends.
Looking forward to the next residential event at Forest Hill on 12-13 October 2024!
