Pardshaw Young Friends' Centre was located within the historic Pardshaw

Friends Meeting House A Friends meeting house is a meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where meeting for worship is usually held. Typically, Friends meeting houses are simple and resemble local residential buildings. Steeples, spires, and ...

complex, near

Cockermouth Cockermouth is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Allerdale in Cumbria, England, so named because it is at the confluence of the River Cocker as it flows into the River Derwent. The mid-2010 census estimates state that Cocke ...

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. C ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The centre provided basic accommodation and facilities for groups connected with the

Religious Society of Friends Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

and was primarily aimed at young adult Friends, known within

Britain Yearly Meeting The Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Britain, also known as the Britain Yearly Meeting (and, until 1995, the London Yearly Meeting), is a Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in England, S ...

as ''Young Friends''. Young Friends began their association with the meeting house in the 1970s. They contributed to the maintenance of the building in annual work camps, a tradition which was still extant as of 2018. The large meeting room in the meeting house became a large very simple bunkhouse with cooking, sleeping and common room space; a shower and washing facilities were subsequently built by Young Friends in the adjacent stable block and a flush WC built at the end of the schoolroom block some time in the 1980s. In around 2007-2008 Young Friends' General Meeting laid down the Young Friends. Pardshaw Centre as an active concern, and administration of the facility passed to a small group of Friends in the local meeting continuing to offer the same very basic facilities to a broadly similar target area of users. In the fourth month of 2018 after a Threshing Meeting held at Pardshaw Meeting House, a small group, The Pardshaw Development Group was established to develop and carry forward a vision for the Pardshaw Meeting House. In 2021 a Charitable Incorporated Orgaisation, "Pardshaw Quaker Centre", was established.

References

Charlie Blackfield's Pardshaw page
(somewhat out of date in places) *http://heritage.quaker.org.uk/files/Pardshaw%20LM.pdf *https://pardshawquakercentre.org.uk/

External links

Report in The Friend on future of Pardshaw Meeting HouseMinutes of YFGM from the tenth month 2008 laying down Pardshaw as an active concern
*https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5171781/charity-overview Quakerism in the United Kingdom Quakerism in England {{quaker-stub