Thomas Geddes

26/04/1863

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It is probable that only Daniel Garlick and Edward Woods could each have designed more churches in South Australia than the Reverend T. Geddes White who is responsible for upwards of 55 among over 100 buildings he had built for the Methodist ministry between 1904 and 1934.

At the age of 30, Robert White (1831-), a wheelwright and coachbuilder by trade, emigrated to Victoria from Kilmarnock, near Glasgow, Ayrshire. Settling in Daylesford, he married Agnes Anderson Geddes (1829-69) in February 1863. Their son, Thomas Geddes White, arrived ten weeks later. A daughter, Jean, followed (BDM, Victoria; Ancestry.com). When Agnes died in childbirth aged 39, Robert moved the family to Sandhurst, near Bendigo. He remarried Sarah Colclough in 1870 (Digger Database). Thomas, we know, excelled at Sunday School (BA 15.10.1872, 2) and admits to have become a trainee architect prior to 1880 (M 25.7.1914, 35; 26.2.1938, 4). With hindsight, it is reasonable to suggest that he worked for the busiest local architect of the time, William C. Vahland, and attended technical drawing classes at the Bendigo School of Mines where Vahland was a trustee and sat on the board (BA 17.7.1879).

While employed by the Elmore engineers, Braid & Stannard, Robert White attracted attention by constructing and exhibiting The Aeropede, 'a new locomotive vehicle'. Pneumatically-propelled, the four-seater developed three horsepower and a top speed of 25 miles per hour (BA 5.9.1879, 3). Neither Robert's invention nor Thomas's architectural career were successfully pursued. Taking up photography instead, Thomas also responded to a powerful call to study for the Methodist ministry. Although he had preached from the age of 17, it was not until January 1889 that he was ordained (BA 10.10.1885, 3; Me 4.2.1889, 3). In April of that year, at Raywood, near Bendigo, he married Gertrude Emily Jubilee Clark, an accomplished pianist and church organist who was given away by her father, the principal of the Wilson's Hill State School (BDM, Victoria).

Having spent a probationary period in outer Melbourne, Thomas White was posted to a Methodist circuit covering north-eastern Tasmania. Despite being commended for doing 'exceptionally good work' both there and farther south, he was admonished for associating sacred music with the stage when, with Gertrude instrumental, he organised a devotional concert in Launceston (DT 18.2.1889, 15). This peccadillo appeared to result in his transportation, much against his will, to a district centred on Quorn, South Australia (A 4.3.1895, 6; 25.2.1914, 14). Four children under the age of five travelled with him; a second boy, Reginald Tasman, was born immediately upon arrival in 1895. 1898 saw him sent to Clare in the Lower Mid-North. Here, taking after his father, he and a plumber, Solomon Williams, obtained a patent for an improved type of acetylene gas generator, The Victory (A 29.1.1901, 2). A subsequent appointment and a promotion to chairmanship at the 'unheard-of' young age of 38, relayed him to the 'Western District' administered from Kadina where the generator was first installed in a shop. Between 1901 and 1904 White travelled huge distances by horse and trap, criss-crossing the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas on abominable roads to impart the gospel to far-flung settlements (ACC 22.12.1911, 6). To entice farming families from their homes, 'winter educational lectures' illustrated by 'limelight views' were conducted by him in the tiny rural towns along the route. White converted photographs of his workaday and holiday travels, e.g., 'Pictorial Tasmania', 'Eastern Cities and the West Coast [of SA]', into slides and lit the magic lantern by means of a portable Victory apparatus (A 16.6.1903, 6). A good deal of money, devoted to building churches and Christian communities, was raised by this method - one practised by several other Methodist ministers of the time.

Three more boys, Eustace, Lexford and Hedley, had been added to the family by the time White was consigned for a further three years to the Gawler circuit which reached northwards to Port Wakefield. The parish trustees at Balaklava were about to blunder into amateurish mediocrity over a proposed new church when their circuit chairman hurriedly but diffidently - he had not shuffled the T-square since 1880 - submitted an alternative design at no cost. It was accepted and declared 'an ecclesiastical and architectural masterpiece' when opened, complete with a Victory acetylene lighting plant, in November 1904 (ACC 25.11.1904, 4-5). His reputation immediately established as the source of handsome, economical, fit-for-purpose country and city churches drawn, specified and overseen free of charge, White found himself preparing designs for 30 others, plus manses, Sunday School halls and kindergartens, during the course of the next ten years (Gazetteer: AM). (W.K. Mallyon - who was perhaps an inspiration when building St Matthew's, Quorn - performed a similar feat over a period of 34 years, ending in 1912.)(Architects' Database). Sites ranged well beyond his designated jurisdictions - from Ceduna to Pinnaroo, from Lucindale to Orroroo, and everywhere in between, not least on the eastern Eyre Peninsula. All these churches were individually distinct despite the many features it was expedient to repeat to produce such a number so rapidly. Conceived in 1909 but not built until 1912, Walkerville Methodist Church represented a departure since Thomas admitted to an application of modern American and British models he had studied (A 15.4.1912, 11; 1.3.1918, 6). Similarly derivative, the Crystal Brook Sunday School (1912) blended 'separation and togetherness' in a versatile departmental layout nonetheless consistent with Puginian Gothic principles (A 13.5.1912, 11).

From the 'Lower Middle' district, White was transferred to Adelaide - to Unley and Goodwood - and from there to West Adelaide to have him lead the participation of larger congregations in Home and Inland Missions, the Christian Endeavour movement and the Sunday School Union among other Methodist causes. 'Supperless men,' he said, 'are pathetic, but less so than menless suppers.'(ACC 1.12.1916, 13) He could be relied on to preach 'forcibly' more than once on a Sunday while the 'grand pictorial lectures', now including 'The Nile of Australia' (the record of a voyage up the Murray by paddlesteamer in 1905) (A 16.9.1905, 14), would be delivered far and wide during the week. As convenor of the central Building Committee, Thomas was able to identify an underendowed parish in need of practical plans for a moderately noble, morale-boosting church or set of classrooms, together with an acetylene generator (ACC 21.2.1913, 14). The Western Suburban circuit gained four buildings during White's incumbency: the Torrensville church (1911-12) was constructed, daringly, of shuttered concrete (A 13.5.1912, 11); the Brooklyn Park church (1913-14), erected by the parishioners themselves, had its council dues waived owing to an exemption exacted by the reverend gentleman which thenceforward applied to churches universally
(A 9.9.1913, 18).

But as the after-hours architect assumed more clerical duties, his architectural services were rationed. In 1914, at the age of 51, White was appointed secretary of the entire SA Methodist Conference, a great honour and an even greater responsibility (A 25.2.1914, 14). During five years in this arduous role, he showed himself to be 'the master of detail' and still managed to sign off 11 building projects (among them a manse at Bute and a kindergarten at Broken Hill), most notably the Holder Memorial church at Mile End (1914-15) (ACC 26.10.1923, 9; 4.9.1914, 18). At the end of 1915, the Whites were placed in charge at Glenelg. Two teenaged sons were officers charged to fight on the Western Front; their youngest daughter and ninth child, Jean, had barely turned eight. A series of weddings then occurred: the four eldest children all married, two of the girls to clergymen, within 28 months - a happy season soured halfway along by the death, at 25, from pneumonia of Ivon who was on the threshold of a career in the priesthood. Celebrations were again in order, however, when White was popularly elected President of the Conference - the culmination of 38 years' exceptional dedication to his faith (A 1.3.1918, 6, 10). He ('one of the most unselfish men I have ever known') committed to serve a term of one year only in 1919 (SAM 2.8.1946, 5). Perhaps the major achievement of White's presidency was to secure, in recognition of Methodist servicemen and -women killed in the war, the nucleus of Memorial Hospital, North Adelaide, applying funds raised by a well-subscribed appeal. Some five years later, White jointly signed the leasehold agreement in relation to the development of the Methodist Union flagship, the Epworth Building in Pirie Street (LTO: CTs 716/186, 177/149, 794/188;
1411/106).

Reassigned to pastoral duties in 1920, Thomas and now less than half his family took their gypsy caravan through Payneham (1920-1) to Broken Hill (1922-3). Architectural work was rejoined almost feverishly: the next decade brought 30 buildings of which 16 were new churches (Gazetteer: AM). The Tailem Bend church (1926-7), a design reproduced incompletely at Military Road, Largs Bay, after White took up the Semaphore circuit in 1928, was the most innovative. Some undertakings - a renovation and a porch at Minlaton; a belfry at Mount Barker - were modest and others grander - a Sunday School at Balaklava; an all-stone church at Gladstone where the contract was administered by J. Firmin Jenkins (A 22.2.1922, 14) - but none lacked a certain refined presence and every one saved the Conference professionals' fees. White 'would gladly go any distance to help trustees', often arranging bridging finance to be granted on generous terms from the Church Loan Fund (SAM 2.8.1946, 5). Even the sporting folk of Gladstone, his final posting, were indebted to him for laying out new tennis courts. The family arrived at the Mid-North town in the midst of another spate of weddings. In 1930, Jean White married a cousin of the Sunday School superintendent who was also the builder of the church (Indices: Marriages).

To the extent of counselling prisoners at the gaol, the pastor with the cow-lick and mesmeric gaze revitalised Methodist church work within the district and continued to produce designs on the side. Just as a kindergarten hall was joined to a new church at Collinsfield, near Redhill, a manse in California bungalow style complemented the new church at Spalding (LTO: CT 1516/196). Not even enforced retirement, or 'supernumerary' status, at the age of 68 in 1931 would diminish White's zeal. The planning of Sunday School halls and small churches took him 'on the stump' from Alawoona in the Mallee to Waramboo in the middle of the Eyre Peninsula during the difficult years of the Depression. Since commercial motion pictures had reduced the appeal of static slide shows, White experimented with a cine camera to superior entertaining effect, prompting his colleagues to say, 'We smiled at his hobbies but we respected his genius.'(SAM 2.8.1946, 5)

A relaxed grandfatherhood in Highgate beckoned, especially when Eustace uncharitably deserted his wife and two daughters after a bare three years of marriage, but that powerful sense of service prevailed (Hopkins, Roarty:. In 1933, White began visiting Methodist churchgoers who had been admitted to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. He sat at bedsides four times a week, 50 weeks a year, for seven years, giving comfort to more than 1500 sick people annually (ACC 23.3.1934, 6). The death of his own daughter, Selina Woollacott, in this period evinced from him a greater sympathy for the suffering of others. Indeed, it was said that 'he met [such] heavy blows with a strong faith and added sweetness of character.'(SAM 2.8.1946, 5) Perhaps to create a lasting memorial, White converted two cottages at Port Wakefield into a seven-bed infirmary. Rev. Woollacott, Selina's widowed husband, sat on the board of management (C 11.5.1933, 14). Still more projects took shape: a vestry at Jamestown, a church at Red Banks (possibly his fifty-fifth) and, finally, a Sunday School hall at Booleroo Centre, opened in 1934, 30 years after his initial tentative foray into building in the Lower Mid-North (Gazetteer: AM). Happy at the last to have celebrated his own golden wedding and to have witnessed the weddings of all his marriageable children, the Rev. T. Geddes White died, aged 83, in 1946.

Many professional architects, working full-time, will not have accomplished more than this man from humble beginnings who, at his day-job, rose to the equivalent rank of archbishop in his church during a life of unceasing service.

Giles Walkley and John Andrewartha

Citation details:
Walkley, Giles and Andrewartha, John, 'White, Thomas Geddes', Architecture Museum, University of South Australia, 2014, Architects of South Australia: [http://www.architectsdatabase.unisa.edu.au/arch_full.asp?Arch_ID=142]