Friends Meeting House

‘The small old white meeting house is surrounded by a yet older small green burial ground where long grasses and flowers innumerable cover the gentle slopes. The soft mounds cluster around the walls, as if those who were laid there had wished their bodies might rest as near as possible to the house of peace where their spirits had rested while on earth’.

: Lucy Violet Hodgkin

After more than 300 years it seems like the Meeting House has barely changed. Come to Good is a tiny village, a few houses and a farm which huddle away in a protective valley.

In the late 1600s Cornwall’s Quakers were facing repression and imprisonment. The Friends were hounded out of their meeting houses and many Cornish Quakers were persecuted and incarcerated.

George Fox, founder, came to Cornwall in 1656. He had been arrested several times for blasphemy, but he continued to speak. After the Toleration Act of 1689 the local group group felt safe to start work on a simple cob and thatch house. One of the oldest Quaker Meeting Houses in England was completed in 1710.

The building has remained in use almost continuously since it was built just over 300 years ago. It finally got electricity and running water in 1967. Inside simple pews surround the central table and a gentle light floods in from the old diamond leaded windows, creating a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere.

It really is a magical place and well worth a visit.