SUNDAY SCHOOL 1950’s
I attended Sunday School at Monkstown Meeting House from the age of about four as we lived nearby in Stradbrook. I travelled there in good time for Meeting for Worship each Sunday morning at 11.00 am. Perched on a little saddle attached to the cross bar of my father’s bike. We did miss occasionally when Dad would say he was going to mitch! Perhaps there was a particularly good tide at the 40ft. that morning. We seemed to go on the bike in all weathers. My mother would wrap me up warmly, pinning a large woollen scarf across my chest under my coat. My Dad often had to ask for help from an obliging Friend to unravel me.
The Meeting House consisted of a large Meeting Room and off this the School Room, where Sunday School was held. There was also a small rather dark kitchen and Ladies and Gents toilets.
We entered the Meeting House through a small porch where umbrellas could be left in a stand. At this end of the Meeting Room there was a balcony with stairs going up on one side. This was rarely used though I do remember as a child hiding up there behind old wooden benches and dusty hassocks. At the far end of the Meeting room was the Minister’s Gallery where raised benches faced the rest of the room. We don’t have any Ministers though there are branches of The Religious Society of Friends in other parts of the world who do. The balcony and Minister’s Gallery are long gone but, in those days, weighty Friends known as Elders who are concerned with the spiritual wellbeing of the meeting sat there and shook hands at the end of the hour so concluding the Meeting.
Our Meeting for Worship is through silence. It would be impossible for a small child to sit in silence for an hour and so we had Sunday School, which I enjoyed very much.
As our parents settled down to worship in the big Meeting Room, the children gathered in the school room. We started with our own few minutes of silence, followed by several hymns and bible stories. There were generally two teachers and we children would be divided into two groups according to our age. One of the teachers would accompany us on an old piano and strains of ‘Jesus bids us shine’ or ‘All things bright and beautiful’ must often have permeated the silence next door but was always welcome as part of the Meeting.
As well as bible stories we heard about early Friends, such as our founder George Fox, William Penn who founded Pennsylvania and Elizabeth Fry known for Prison Reform. I always had a sixpence ready to put in the little wooden collection box for various Quaker concerns. Most weeks we would produce a drawing depicting the story we had heard and clutching these would troop into meeting for the last quarter of an hour. I am sure this invasion disturbed the tranquillity of a settled and focused meeting.
At Christmas time most years we put on a nativity play. A makeshift stage was assembled in the school room. I remember the excitement of being cast as the Angel Gabriel, with lines to learn, after several years of being a shepherd. My mother dressed me in a long white gown, probably fashioned from a sheet, a wonderful pair of wings and a head-dress to depict a halo. I rehearsed my lines diligently so that I could address the frightened shepherds. Perhaps the highlight was the year I had the part of Mary and was allowed to bring my favourite dolly to lie in the manger as the baby Jesus. These were happy days that I remember fondly.
Suzanne Hayes