A memorial plaque is to be unveiled at the site of a former meeting house and burial ground on Saturday, 25 April as part of a new heritage trail, highlighting Mansfield as the birthplace of the worldwide Quaker movement.

Nottinghamshire County Council hopes the project can help draw visitors to the town, looking for information about ancestors or the history of their faith.

The Old Meeting House (pictured), where Mansfield’s Quakers had met since the 17th Century was demolished in the 1970s. Headstones from the adjoining Quaker burial ground were moved to a new Meeting House building off Rosemary Street and the remains were moved to Mansfield Cemetery.

The site was subsequently used as a public car park but was earmarked for Mansfield’s new £9m bus station and in 2012, during construction work on the new building, further Quaker headstones and human remains were recovered from beneath the car park. The burial ground is now known to have been the final resting place for approximately 150 Quakers, buried there between the 1700s and 1950s. The first Quaker burials had taken place in nearby Skegby.

The memorial plaque, to be unveiled at the bus station, remembers the Quakers who were once buried there. Some headstones have been placed at a Garden of Reflection adjacent to the New Friends Meeting House, where Mansfield’s Quaker community meets today.

Mansfield can also claim to be the actual birthplace of the Quaker religion.

Although originally from Leicestershire, the founder of the Quaker movement, George Fox (1624-1691), lived in Mansfield from the 1640s onwards, working as a shoemaker. It was during his time in the town that he is said to have had the calling to form a new religion, based on a different way of communicating with God and recruited its first followers.

An excerpt from his journal reads, ‘As I was walking by the steeple-house side (St Peter’s Church), in the town of Mansfield I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus that spoke to thy condition”‘. It was at this moment, in 1647, that Fox is said to have realised that man could approach God in silence and prayer, without any intermediary in the form of a priest or clergy – a cornerstone of the Quaker faith.

As well as the site of the Old Meeting House and burial ground, St Peter’s Church and New Friends Meeting House, other important Quaker heritage sites featured on the audio tour trail include:

•The Almshouses, Nottingham Road: terraced, brick-built cottages built in 1691, partly for elderly Quaker ladies. The homes are still there to this day.
•Metal Box factory clock tower: the clock tower, dating back to 1927, is all that remains of the former Metal Box factory which was founded and run by three prominent Quaker families, Barringer, Wallis and Manners.
•Westfield Folkhouse: owned by the Manners family of Quakers. Rachel Manners, a widow and the last surviving member of the family, left the house to be used for the benefit of young people in Mansfield and is used to this day as a Young People’s Centre, operated by the County Council.
•St Phillip Neri Catholic Church: the site of the former house of George Fox, founder of the Quaker movement.

The heritage trail is designed to be done on foot and can take one to two hours, depending on walking pace. The audio tour, leaflet and further information is available to download from www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/quakers-heritage-trail

The project has been led by Nottinghamshire County Council’s Senior Practitioner in Heritage Tourism, Laura Simpson, with support from Theology students at the University of Nottingham and local historian and author, Ralph Holt, who has extensively researched Quaker history in Mansfield.

Laura said, “We hope this project will raise awareness about one of Nottinghamshire’s best kept secrets – the role Mansfield played in the birth of what is now a worldwide religion.

“The Quaker movement has members across the globe, with a high concentration in the United States. Given the increasing popularity of heritage tourism and the desire of people to find out more about their ancestors and religious origins, we hope this can be a draw for visitors from across the globe.

“We are indebted to the Quaker community in Mansfield for their support and in particular Ralph Holt, without whose knowledge and research over many years, the project would not have been possible.”

Ralph Holt, who helped fund a headstone in Mansfield Cemetery to mark the Quakers’ remains unearthed at the burial ground, welcomed the recognition being given to both the burial site and Mansfield’s Quaker heritage.

Ralph said: “I’m delighted that at last, 368 years since George Fox started the movement in Mansfield, there is going to be recognition of and awareness raised about the significant role played by Quakers in the town across the years.

“Mansfield is the place where it all began. What started here with George Fox and a group of local people – Timothy Garland, George Bingham and Elizabeth Hooton (the first female follower of George Fox) – spread to others throughout the area, then the entire country and now across the whole world.”

Ralph will join guests at a special event to unveil the Mansfield Memorial Quakers Plaque and launch the heritage trail at Mansfield Bus Station, Quaker Way, Mansfield on Saturday 25 April (5.30pm start). Members of the public are welcome to attend.

The event has been organised to coincide with Mansfield’s Purple Flag Party, a celebration of the town being awarded Purple Flag status, which recognises excellence in the management of town centres at night.

The accreditation was awarded in November last year in recognition of work by a wide range of partners, including Mansfield Association of Licensed Venues, Mansfield BID, Mansfield District Council, Mansfield Partnership Against Crime and Nottinghamshire Police.