Quaker Burial Ground Approximately 300 Metres North-West Of Beasting Farm

SE 16 SE 8/42

DACRE DACRE LANE (west side, off) Quaker burial ground approximately 300 metres north-west of Beasting Farm

II

Burial ground. Dated 1682, with probably mid C19 alterations. Coursed squared gritstone. A rectangular walled enclosure measuring approximately 10 x 15 metres, with a gateway at the north end of the west side. The walls approximately 2 metres high, with large quoins to the south-west and south- east corners, and flat capstones. The gateway has chamfered quoined jambs and a lintel inscribed '1682'. Interior: a chamfered window mullion is built into the inner face of the north wall; no grave stones. The lack of original quoins to the north-west and north-east corners, together with the reused mullion in the north wall suggest that the enclosure originally extended further north, and may have included a house. Dacre was the centre of the main concentration of Nidderdale Quakers in the late C17. In 1696 a new meeting house was built at Dacre; it went out of use in the early C19 and was later demolished, but burials continued here until the mid C19. It is possible that the meeting house was on the north side of the burial ground, and that its demolition resulted in the reconstruction of the north wall of the graveyard. B Jennings, A History of Nidderdale, 1967, pp 398 and 425.

Listing NGR: SE1867760626