Christ Church, Bells Corners — Deanery of West Ottawa

One of the most plaintive inquiries ever received at the Diocesan Archives is for a photograph of the brand, spanking new frame Christ Church, Bells Corners that was burned to the ground by the great Carleton County Fire of 1870. Alas, no such picture exists. One is forced to conclude that churches, when they are built, are expected to last forever, and there need be no hurry in taking a photograph. For many early churches, the photographer was summoned only at the last minute before demolition crews began their work of destruction, to capture some sense of the first house of worship before a new one replaced it.

Christ Church, Bells Corners, by no stretch of the imagination, is one of the earliest Anglican churches or parishes in the region. Indeed, worship services started out for local Anglicans as part of a stone Union Church shared with local Methodists and Presbyterians on land provided by a local Anglican tavernkeeper, Hugh Bell in the 1860s. No sooner had local Anglicans exerted themselves to build the frame Christ Church in 1870 than it unobligingly burned down in the huge conflagration blowing across rural Carleton County. And so, a quarter of a century before the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa was carved out of the eastern and northern sections of the Diocese of Ontario in 1896, Anglicans at Bells Corners found themselves at work building their third house of worship—this time in non-flammable brick.

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Here we see that third house of worship at Bells Corners as photographed a century later as incorporated into a parish complex that shows the peak of the fourth Christ Church rising above the finishing touches being placed on the landscaping circa 1970.

The brick construction of the third Christ Church may have been a reflexive response to the Carleton County fire, in hopes that should another fire happen along, the brick walls of the new house of worship might prove more resistant to the devouring element than the frame house of worship had been.

It is possible that the design of the third church, although built in brick, was based almost exactly on that of the church that burned. The construction material may be different, but the corbel windows and the unambitious scale both suggest that its design was intended for a frame house of worship.

There are two curious aspects to the 1871 church. The first is the mansard roof on the belfry, a choice suggesting that the designs (the same design?) of the 1870 and 1871 church were both influenced by Thomas Fuller who mixed English Gothic Revival and French Second Empire in the Centre Block of parliament to express the bicultural make-up of Canada. The second, curious aspect is the unusual stick style design of the bargeboard of the upper gable, deliberately designed to echo the corbel arches of the windows, yet incorporating a Saint Andrew’s cross and two smaller crosses.

A century later, the 1871 church was incorporated into a larger new complex designed to show how modern the church could appear, yet still be conscious of its heritage. What did not show, at least not at first, was that most of the new complex was below grade.

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