Dorothy and I set up an informal weekly Meeting in the Chocolate Quarter in Somerdale soon after our arrival in January this year and later arranged through Hazel Mitchell to have a regular Meeting here on the third Sunday of the month, to which we invited Friends from neighbouring Meetings.  This has become part of Bath Local Meeting, of which we are now formally members.

The Chocolate Quarter is run as a retirement and care home by the St. Monica Trust, which was founded by the Wills family in the 1920s.  They have a number of retirement homes around Bristol and recently they acquired and rebuilt the Fry’s chocolate factory buildings in Somerdale, which had been closed down after about 90 years operation, first by the Fry Quaker family and later taken over by Cadbury’s.  So the building has long Quaker associations.

We now have a Meeting for Worship here at 11 am every Sunday lasting for 30  minutes, to which everyone here is invited, but also to local Quakers on the third Sunday of the month.

Access from Keynsham is by Station Road, then left into Somerdale Road, which leads directly to the Chocolate Quarter.  There is limited free parking for visitors behind the Chocolate Quarter (follow the signs to St.Augustine’s Surgery), on the roads in the completed part of the Somerdale estate approaching the Chocolate Quarter or in the ‘pay and display’ car park at the Pavilion beyond it.

Colin’s recent photo of the Chocolate Quarter on a sunny day also shows Kelston Roundhill in the background (where Bath Quakers hold an anuual day of quiet).

Keynsham: Diary Date Fri 9 Nov

Hazel Mitchell writes:

Keynsham Arts Consortium is preparing Requiem – a WWI Centenary
Commemoration in words and music, to be presented at The Space, Temple
Road, Keynsham Frid 9 Nov 1930.

Tickets £7 from keynshamtickets.cloudvenue.co.uk.

Note Hazel Mitchell & family are involved with poetry.