St. Mary's Anglican Church - Belleisle, Nova Scotia - Anglican and Episcopal Churches on Waymarking.com

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St. Mary's Anglican Church - Belleisle, Nova Scotia

in Anglican and Episcopal Churches

Posted by:  T0SHEA

20T E 310220 N 4963767

This little country church has stood aside the Evangeline Trail in the community of Belleisle for well over 175 years.

Erected in 1844, this little Anglican church was built with little decoration or ornamentation, a plain and simple rectangular meeting house style church designed to serve the purpose and nothing more. Consecration of the church took place the year after construction had begun, on September 28, 1845.

The building appears to be resting on stone blocks, now covered with a coat of parging. Originally known as St. Mary's Chapel of Ease, the church has been recovered in aluminum siding, making the building look very much metallic - it actually shines in the sun.

The bell tower is possessed of the only real decoration on this church, other than a trio of Gothic arched windows down each side of the nave. The square tower is topped with a reasonably tall spire, with flared eaves, while around the top of the belfry is a low fence, suggestive of seacoast widow walks, with little crosses atop each corner post. Below are very simple square vents and farther below is a single Gothic arched window in the front of the tower, directly above the double door entrance.

To the south and west of the church is the Anglican cemetery. The original church on the site was built about 1776 and was half owned by the Anglicans. They bought the other half, in about 1834, and eventually tore it down before building this one in 1844. The cemetery, then, was likely established as a non denominational cemetery around the time of the first burial, 1817. It could well have been established as early as 1776, with any older interments marked by stones or wooden markers now gone. In the cemetery are about 100 known interments, the earliest being that of Jane Ruggles, who was born in 1756, dying in 1817 at the age of 61. The cemetery remains in use to this day.