St Mark
Ninebanks, Northumberland
St Mark's offers breathtaking views over the remote West Allen valley and a fascinating local history and is on the Isaac Tea Trail North Pennines Heritage Walk.
The Grade II listed Meeting House, built of local stone in the plain and simple North Pennines Quaker style is set in a burial ground and informal garden fed by two burns which flow into the nearby river at Allendale Bridge End.
The lives of past generations of local Quaker farming and lead mining families are commemorated on the modest grave markers that surround the Meeting House and the Meeting House Cottage. Quakers have worshiped here since the 1660s and continue to meet every Sunday. The interior of the Meeting House retains much of the traditional layout of a Quaker place of worship with an Elders bench, ministers gallery and wooden shutters to divide the space so men and women could meet separately for discussion of matters of church governance and discipline.
Historically its congregation was drawn from the farming country around. Outside, there is a burial ground which is at least as old as the earliest Meeting House here, with several marked graves. There is also a separate cottage and an outbuilding with privy.