Kilbreda’s cellar has always attracted interest any time it is mentioned. What draws anyone to a dank and dark subterranean room is anyone’s guess, but I imagine it has a certain mystique. It always has had. The cellar was obviously useful in the days of the Coffee Palace and possibly the convent, although no mention of it is made with the latter, except to say that a ‘frigidaire’ was purchased at some later stage, leading me to believe that it was used to store foodstuffs for the nuns and boarders.

The street level bar of the Coffee Palace was located where the Principal’s Office is now, with a few minor alterations over the years. Thus, it was sensible that the cellar be located below it for ease of access. An access point from the footpath on Mentone Parade is evident from within the cellar, but is covered by garden on the outside. As a former paperboy, and, may I say, Herald Sun Newsboy of the Year 1980, who sold papers in the Tudor Inn at Cheltenham, I often watched them rolling kegs into the cellar there. The same would have occurred here, at least during the Coffee Palace period and around 1900 when the building was a pub.

The trapdoor leading to the cellar has been an attraction for students in that classroom for many years and signatures in the cellar attest to the many clandestine visits made by students for most of Kilbreda’s life until the repurposing in 1997. It was my Homeroom in 1991 and 1996, and, judging by the signatures on the trapdoor, it appears some of those students must have snuck down, at least once. One of the more famous intruders was none other than Margaret Underwood, my great friend and former colleague and author of our history, A View from the Tower. Margaret was a student here in the 50s, then became a Brigidine nun, and, as Sr Petra, taught my wife at St Pat’s Mentone. Then, as Mrs Margaret Underwood, she taught her English in Year 12 here at Kilbreda and wrote her glowing reference.

As a student, while waiting for the teacher to arrive, Marg had climbed down into the cellar with friends, only to be left in there and the door slammed shut above her. Her classmates had just pulled the teacher’s desk onto the trapdoor to keep her there, when their teacher, a feisty nun, possibly Mother Aquin, came in. The students all stood quietly and then, in the silence, the teacher’s desk started to move as Marg attempted to open the trapdoor and extricate herself. I can’t recall what ensued, but, I’m sure it is best left to our imaginations!

Damian Smith
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