The Master’s Chair

28 July 26

Kelso Masonic Centre By Sylvia Latham

 A report in The Bathurst Times dated January 1891 declares: ‘The furniture in the lodge-room is eloquent with meaning, and its simple symbolical beauty is unsurpassable. The chairs are made of that wondrously lustrous New Guinea cedar, which, when polished, seems to possess vast transparent depths wherein fantastic shapes wreath themselves. The columns holding the canopies of the three chairs are Ionic, Doric and Corinthian.

A story in the local press claimed that in 1974 Grand Lodge tried to purchase the chair for the Sydney Masonic Centre.

Lord Carrington, Governor of NSW and Grand Master, laid the Keystone for the Masonic Temple at 99 Keppel Street, Bathurst in 1889. The Lodge furniture was relocated to Kelso in 1983. The Master’s Chair and its side chairs were crafted in 1890 by William Dryden, who was born in County Durham, Ireland in 1855. He began an apprenticeship at 16, married Mary in 1883 and they arrived in Bathurst in 1884. Their seven children were all born in Bathurst. He worked as a Joiner and Architect and, in a period when the Anglican and Catholic religions were clearly separated, was eagerly contracted by both. Examples include the 1896 Bishop’s Throne and side altars for St Michael and John’s Catholic Cathedral in Bathurst; in 1910, a cover for the Christening font and other items for All Saints Anglican Cathedral, and (although consecrated in 1835) what is now the altar, choir screens and surrounds for the Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Kelso. He designed a replacement steeple for the Methodist Church in 1911.

Not only was William a skilled craftsman, but he also contributed to Bathurst society in many ways. He had a deep passion for music. He was Director of the Bathurst Choral Society and was choir master in the Catholic church for over 30 years. He was also President of the St Vincent de Paul Society. He served on the Bathurst Council for many years. There are a number of reports in the local paper of his campaign to get Council funding for a lake to beautify the town.

Dryden was the architect of the Evans Memorial at the end of Kings Parade. Unveiled in November 1920, it was designed as a Centennial Memorial to the Surveyor and Explorer George Evans, who was the first European to cross the Great Dividing Range leading to the discovery of the Bathurst Plains in 1813. He experimented with pressed metal as a building cladding and the Burlington Picture Theatre built in Bathurst in the early 1900s was an example. William had a couple of years’ serious illness and in 1924, William and Mary moved to Sydney. William Dryden died in Sydney in 1939

Above: The Burlington Picture Theatre was an example of pressed metal cladding

Above: Mary and William Dryden Photo by Robert Cale, with permission of the Dryden family