The Church

In the oldest continuously inhabited English settlement in the Western hemisphere, five minutes down the road from where I live, can be found the hemisphere’s oldest continuously used Anglican church.

The country is Bermuda, the town is St. George’s and the church is that of St. Peter. The building’s history is a microcosm of Bermuda’s, a distillation of many of the Island’s formative events.

The first church was erected on the site just months after Bermuda’s first settlers arrived in 1612, but it soon blew down and was replaced by a sturdier, timber-framed structure in 1619. It was in this building that Governor Nathaniel Butler convened the new colony’s first parliament in August 1620.

The replacement itself lasted only 100 years before being destroyed by a ferocious hurricane in 1714. Its successor was built in stone, although the original altar, pulpit and a number of the cedar timbers were salvaged from the wreckage and remain in the church to this day.

As the years passed by, St. George’s population was swollen by the arrival of merchants and British soldiers and the small church could no longer cope with the numbers. In 1815 two additional wings were added to the south side of the church. Unfortunately they were carelessly built atop a number of vaults in the southern graveyard; these promptly collapsed under the weight, almost destroying the new walls.

A bell tower was added to the west wing at the same time; before this, the church bell hung from the branch of a cedar tree in the churchyard. This tree survived for almost four hundred years until it was killed during the cedar blight that ravaged Bermuda in the middle of the last century. Despite this, the tree remained standing until September last year when the wrath of hurricane Fabian finally shattered it.

A walk through the rest of the churchyard reveals other, less savoury, aspects of Bermuda’s history. At the western end is the old burial ground for slaves and free blacks. The small, unmarked humps of stone that protrude from the turf there provide a sad contrast with the headstones in the rest of the graveyard, particularly the two at the eastern end. There lie Bermuda’s former Governor, Sir Richard Sharples, and his aide-de-camp, Captain Hugh Sayers, who were assassinated in March 1973. Sir Richard is the only Governor of a British territory to have ever been assassinated. The hanging of his killer, Erskine Durrant Burrows, ignited latent racial tensions which resulted in four days of rioting and civil disturbances.

Although St. Peter’s exterior remains decorated in early Victorian Gothic style (a result of renovations in 1841, the last changes to the appearance of the church), its interior is still mostly 17th and 18th century. A glance upwards reveals an impressive lattice of cedar beams and the roof slate they support, now visible following 20th century restoration work. The old Jacobean altar is situated at the east end of the church, flanked by rich purple drapes, while the unusual three-tiered pulpit sits uncomfortably in the middle of the north wall. The only really modern feature is the organ, built in Montreal in 1984. Its installation required the bisection of the western gallery, where slaves sat from 1721 until the emancipation proclamation was read in 1834.

Today, the town of St. George is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The history that seeps from the walls of St. Peter’s Church is one of the reasons why.

This article was first published on Four Corners last month. More pictures of the church and its graveyard can be found here.

Comments

[David on 04.04.04 at 15:18]

Cribbing articles phil, is one running out of ideas??? U know you can always ask the corpus boys for some tips.....

[Somers on 05.04.04 at 14:03]

Plus he moved the Swimming Instincts down in the ranks!! Is that any way to treat the birthday girls business??? ;)

[Ross Eldridge on 07.04.04 at 11:34]

Phil: Nice article, I read it on the other website earlier. Great pictures too. It does not mention that spring is here (after all, the Horseshoe Bay wiener-wagger is back). But, Phil, nice work!

[Graeme Outerbridge on 07.04.04 at 12:14]

Nice one Phil? I always thought it was "nice one Cyril" but it was a long time ago that Cyril played for Spurs!