St. John, Antrim — Deanery of the Southwest

We may well ponder what the good farmers of the Antrim vicinity were thinking when they began drawing timbers and other construction materials to build Saint John’s Church in 1873. Were they pondering the great Carleton County fire that had passed through three years earlier, levelling all buildings in sight? Did they wonder if a comparable conflagration might reoccur and destroy the new house of worship they were embarking on building? Were they even thinking about what a proper Anglican church should look like?

Or, is it more likely that they focussed on the current need—a house of worship in their own vicinity that could be quickly built, yet be as up to date as the new Saint Paul’s Church being mooted for Hazeldean? For some Anglicans in Carleton County from the very beginning of settlement had built their house of worship more enduringly of stone, fronted by a tower that proclaimed them an established church. A case in point was Saint Mary’s Church, Pinhey’s Point. For Anglicans of Antrim and Hazeldean, however, living as they did in the shadow of one of the largest concentrations of sawmills and planing mills in North America at the Chaudière Falls, they chose to build entirely in frame in a style that came to be known as ‘carpenter gothic.’

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The name of Antrim seemingly suggested settlers who had come from the county of that name in northern Ireland. But names can be misleading. Most, if not all, of the Anglican families intent on building Saint John’s Church came from southeastern Ireland and had been resident in the vicinity for two generations before they began putting up the walls of this house of worship.

The choice of name for this church—Saint John’s—was typical of their conservative inclinations, being one of only five or six names that most early Anglicans chose their church name from: All Saints, Christ Church, Saint James, Saint John, Saint Paul, and maybe in doubtful cases, Saint Thomas.

How, then, given this evidence of their conservatism, do we explain the High Victorian Ecclesiastical Gothic Revival design of this house of worship, albeit one tamped down by the limitations of the frame medium. The truthful answer is that we do not know. No document, no smoking gun, can be found that conclusively states how and why this design was chosen.  However, we have two theories to explain what probably happened.

First, Thomas Fuller—head designer of parliament’s Centre Block being built in Ottawa, designed and built a small stone Gothic Revival house of worship (All Saints, Westboro) in 1865 in the neighbourhood of Nepean Township in which he resided.  If the novelty of that design was surprising for local farmers, they noted, approvingly, that it did not feature the expense of building a tower, hence removing one area of additional expense when building at Antrim.

There was the also the matter of a church being proposed for Hazeldean at the same time Antrim was contemplating its new house of worship. If Hazeldean was preparing to build in the new more modern Gothic Revival style, was Antrim willing to be left behind with an older style?  Those who understand neighbourhood rivalries can anticipate the answer to that question. By some miracle, the frame Saint John’s Church has survived for 150 years, whereas Saint Paul’s, Hazeldean burned down in the 1930s.

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