Quaker Tapestry Museum Closure Announced as Costs Rise

The announcement of the closure Quaker Tapestry Museum closure has cast a quiet shadow over Kendal, where the museum has long stood as a place of reflection, creativity and community memory. 

Housed in an old Georgian building with its familiar welcome signs and brightly coloured railings at the car park entrance, the site has attracted visitors from across the country and beyond. Yet the Quaker Tapestry Museum closure has become unavoidable because income has not kept up with what the museum itself called “regular leaps in running costs”. It will shut its doors on 13 December.

Inside, visitors have been able to explore around 40 embroidered panels drawn from a remarkable 77 panel tapestry which traces Quaker influence on the world. These sit alongside many other artefacts that speak to a vibrant tradition. The scale of the original tapestry project is one of its most moving aspects. Some 4,000 people from 15 countries took part, a testament to the collaborative spirit that shaped it from its beginnings in a Sunday school in Taunton in the early 1980s.

The Quaker Tapestry Museum closure feels all the more poignant because it comes in the same year the site won the 2025 small visitor attraction prize at the Cumbria Tourism Awards in July. That recognition reflected the care and character that made the museum a valued stop for tourists and a point of pride for those who helped create and maintain it.

In September the museum launched a fundraiser, explaining that it “needed support”. On Tuesday it reiterated that the “income received from paying visitors and other sources has failed to keep pace with regular leaps in running costs”. With that, the trustees confirmed that the museum would “sadly…say goodbye both to our staff and to our visitors” in December. It is a difficult moment for everyone involved, made even more so by the cultural and emotional weight carried by the tapestry itself.

The institution has not given up hope for the tapestry’s future. It said it was “working very hard to find a financially sustainable future for the Quaker Tapestry”. For many, this commitment offers some comfort. The tapestry reflects values associated with Quakers, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, who do not share a fixed set of beliefs but uphold testimonies on themes such as truth and equality. Those values run like a thread through every panel and through the community that created them.

As the Quaker Tapestry Museum closure approaches, supporters will be hoping that this is not an ending but a pause before a new chapter begins.