THIS historic building was lost in the 1930s clearance of Keighley's Westgate area – the old Quaker meeting house in Mill Hill Street, approximately on the site now occupied by the Salvation Army.
The Keighley Society of Friends had suffered persecution during the 17th century.
Jonas Smith was imprisoned at Pontefract in 1655, and Robert Hudson at York in 1666.
Thomas Brigg, refusing to pay tithes to the established church, had "pewter to the value of £1.10s" confiscated. A "company of rude men with club, bill and staves" dragged twenty Friends out of a meeting at Laycock in 1660.
This meeting house dated from 1709, and shared a yard with Upper Green Congregational – formerly Independent – Chapel. Despite appeals for its preservation, it was demolished in 1938, the Keighley Society of Friends having moved into its Skipton Road premises two years earlier.
The small burial ground at Calversyke Hill, off West Lane, usually associated with the prominent Brigg family, originated with the Quakers.
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