Yesterday, my brother, Martin, told me that the Devonshire Street Meeting House is to be sold. That brought a flood of childhood memories to my mind….

My parents, John and Vreni Fallding, were married at Devonshire Street Meeting house in August 1953. They had met at Young Friends gatherings after my mother had migrated from Switzerland in the previous year.

Every Sunday our family would dress in our Sunday best. My dresses were simple and always made by my mother. We would walk to the railway station and catch the train to Central, coming out of the underground into the sunlight at the base of the big flight of  concrete steps up to Devonshire Street opposite the end of the long dark tunnel going across to Railway Square. Sometimes there was a hot dog man there with a white apron and a small stand on wheels. The steps were steep and twinkled with stars of mica in bright sunlight.

 We walked along the empty and quiet Sunday morning streets of Surrey Hills, past the corner pub which smelt of stale beer from the night before. Then up more big steps up into the Meeting House porch and more up inside. There, at the polished wooden doors of the Meeting room, stood the smiling Leo Menka. On either side were the Sunday school rooms, one for the younger children on the right and the older children went to the left, they had a higher table and chairs, we had a low table and chairs, coloured pencils and plasticene. My mother and Ruth Allen were the main Sunday school teachers. There was generally a bible story and then colouring in or making the story in plasticine. Sometimes we had a story of inspiring people eg Washington Carver, Mahatma Gandhi or Helen Keller. About 15 or 20 minutes before the end of the Meeting, we would be summoned and very quietly entered the Meeting to sit in the front pew on the right hand side for the final part of the Meeting. That learning to sit in stillness and not fidget has been a great gift from which I have benefitted my whole life.

 The meeting room was solemn and cool and had a dimmer light than outside. Men and women sat in their regular places on two or three rows of wooden pews set in a square around a small table on which was a bible and a small vase of flowers. Wallis Powell, William and Kitty Cooper, Eric and Enid Pollard, Arthur and David Cooper, Margaret Watts, Edna Briggs, William (Bill) and Faye Ridden, Ruth and David Allen, Margaret and Helen Morris, the Swan sisters (who lived in the historic Elizabeth Farm House at Parramatta), Leo and Elspeth Menka, Geza and Marjorie Santow, Rudi and Hanna Lemberg, Max and Erika Wohlwill, Berta Monticone and sometimes, the exotic Durga Lal. Later, came Joy and Leslie Storey, Dougal and Carol Maclean, Red Mitchell, Sheila and Peter Mason and the Sobeys with their families. Even later, the Marsden Smedley and Tranter families from England and the Horowitz family from the USA. Wallis Powell, William Cooper, Eric Pollard and Margaret Watts always felt to me like the “parents” of the meeting.

The big clock on the wall ticked and I spent my time imbibing the silence, watching the adults, studying the patterns in the high ceiling and the rectangles of sky visible from the high windows.  Adults stood and spoke seriously, Bill Ridden in his slightly disheveled black suit was the main one who quoted the bible as I remember.

At the far end of the hall was a low platform which was used sometimes for the children’s performance of the Christmas play, organized by Erika Wohlwill I think. Our family also played carols on recorders at this celebration. The library books were behind glass doors on the wall with the clock, behind the two sided entry vestibule. Tables with pamphlets and books were near the entrances.

 After meeting there would be conversations near the pamphlet tables and on the front porch and the steps. It was still the era of children being seen but not heard, so I do not remember many adults talking to me, except Leo Menka, Max and Erika Wohlwill and Helen and Margaret Morris. Leo, like all the men, was dressed in a suit and tie, he was small balding man with glasses and a wonderful welcoming smile and twinkling eyes. Most of the other men were big and serious and in grey suits with their wives beside them. The older ladies generally dressed for the times with hats and some with gloves. I particularly remember Margaret Watts with blue close-fitting hats and Edna Briggs with a taller more cylindrical brown-gold hat. The European migrants, many of whom were refugees from World War Two, generally wore less conservative and more colourful garments.

Occasionally, maybe monthly, there was a “basket lunch” after meeting in the lower hall. A long table was spread with food everyone had contributed, brought in the ladies’ shoppimg baskets covered with a tea towel. There were white bread sandwiches cut into triangles, white bread,  butter, cheese, cold meats, tomatoes, lettuce and I particularly remember a sliced meat loaf with eggs in it. The egg yolks were ringed with grey. It was always present at a “basket lunch”. Then there were cups of tea and cake. We never had food like that at home.

 Mrs Pettith was the caretaker of the building. She was a harried looking woman who wore a floral apron. She never came to Meeting. You walked down the path with stray fishbone ferns beside the tall paling fence at the  side of the building to the lower hall, and just beyond the hall door was the Pettith’s door. It was set up like a terrace house inside and has been used for guest accommodation in more recent years. I would go there to see her with my father but we never went inside. The toilets were further down the side path before the wooden paling gate to the back lane.

 There were not many children our age – Ken Allen, Leah and Ray Monticone, later Red Mitchell’s daughters,  and sometimes Peter Storey, the Tranter and Marsden-Smedley children.

Most were older or “Young Friends”,  the Pollards (Lanie, Mary and Paul), the Wohlwills (Renate, Monika, Sabine, and Christopher), the older Monticones (Charles, Illdu, Mark and Sun), Jenny Allen, Gigi Santow and her older brother, Dierdre, Chloe and Paul Mason, the Macleans( Cathy, David and .. ).

 When I was about 13 we had our first car and that more-or-less coincided with the opening of the Wahroonga Meeting House, which was closer to home but across country, so we went there from then on. The atmosphere was very different, much lighter and less formal. Sunday school was far more interesting with a variety of wonderful adults to “teach” and inspire us eg Rosemary Brown, who brought microscopes, and wonderful rich discussions led by Max Wohlwill, Eddie Linacre and Rudi Lemberg. The meeting house was beautiful and light and looked out into the bush and the individual chairs were in a circle. The library was very accessible and had a wide variety of interesting books from which I drew inspiration.

 So the days of Meeting at Devonshire Street meetings had closed in my life.

Eveen before “our” Devonshire Meeting House.   Friends Meeting House, Devonshire St 1854 by Frederick Mackie. Courtesy National Library of Australia