On Saturday 7 March a group of 8 young people aged 11-18 and 5 adult volunteers made their way to Forest Hill for the weekend. On Saturday afternoon we enjoyed a walking tour around Bermondsey, hosted by local Quaker Sheila Taylor, who showed us key spots from the history of the remarkable Ada and Alfred Salter. Ada had been mayor of Bermondsey from 1922, the first female mayor in London, and Alfred was a GP who became the Member of Parliament. They campaigned for better housing, clearing dreadful slums, planted trees and cared tirelessly for the young, the sick and the poor. Ada ran girls’ clubs in the area. Tragically, their only daughter Joyce died aged 8 of scarlet fever. BYM has an annual Salter lecture, named in their memory.
We enjoyed a picnic lunch in the Ada Salter garden at Southwark Park, and from there we visited the Brunel Tunnel museum in Rotherhithe, where the first tunnel under the Thames was dug (now housing the Windrush Line). Feeling educationally nourished and physically tired, we headed back to the meeting house for biscuits, luxury hot chocolate and squirty cream, and a game of Mafia.
In the evening we ate double portions of pasta bake, Madeira cake and custard, and got dressed up in the style of 1930s train passengers for a very dramatic and highly entertaining murder mystery game. Most players were able to correctly deduce the identity of the murderer who done it, the guilty character being a detective by the name of Hugh Dunnit. We ended a happy day with a short epilogue in the meeting room.
On Sunday morning, International Women’s Day, we awoke to news of the Grand Prix result from one or two who had arisen extremely early (or stayed up extremely late!) to follow events in Melbourne, sang a few songs, and enjoyed delicious pancakes and hot cross buns as part of Forest Hill Quaker Meeting’s monthly shared breakfast. A bumper 24 children and young people joined the Children’s and Junior Meeting, on the topic of the Salters, before heading into the meeting room to join the adults for all age worship.
We were all given a card shaped like a candle to write the names of “shining lights” – Quakers who have inspired us. After meeting for worship some helped in the garden, including clearing a memorial stone removed from the old meeting house/burial ground in Peckham, which included commemoration of Ada and Alfred Salter. Around this we placed all the “shining lights” that Friends had written in meeting for worship. We shared lunch with Forest Hill Friends, and went on our way feeling very grateful for a super weekend together and looking forward to seeing each other again soon.
Sheila Taylor shared a lovely short film (6 mins) which was made for the Salter centenary by the local secondary school. (The one which is now on the site of the school that the Salters’ daughter Joyce attended.) It depicts Joyce as she was back in 1910 and then imagines her as a contemporary schoolgirl playing football with her friends on the river path and in the Ada Salter Garden. Video here
