This church was built about 680 feet east of Lucy Maud Montgomery's birthplace 12 years after her birth in 1874. By that time, though, Lucy had been living in Cavendish for 10 years. When Lucy Maud was only 21 months of age her mother died of tuberculosis and the girl was taken to Cavendish, about 18 kilometres east, to live with her grandparents.
The Presbyterians were the first to erect a church in New London, with the construction of a log building at the harbour in 1810. A second was built in 1841 ("
...June 8,1841, called for
tenders for the building of St. John's (Free) Presbyterian Church,
New London"). There were actually two Presbyterian factions in New London at that time, the
Burghers and the
Anti-Burghers. We don't know which evolved into this church.
This church, then, appears to have been the third New London Presbyterian Church. Notice that the church's sign fails to identify it as
St. John’s Presbyterian Church, only as the
New London Presbyterian Church. It seems that it wasn't, then was, then wasn't, then was called St. John’s Presbyterian. Today it identifies itself as St. John’s Presbyterian on its
Facebook page. There, I posed the question of the date of construction of the building and received this reply: "
We just celebrated our 130th anniversary last October. That is the anniversary of the church. The parish started in 1835 approximately!!
The parish is about 180 years old. The church was 130 years old in October [2016].". This is in line with several other sources which (although somewhat obliquely) date the building to 1886.
The building itself is now wrapped tightly in vinyl siding from foundation to steeple cornice. With a tall yet simple rectangular sanctuary, the building also has a fair sized chancel or vestry at the rear. We don't know it that is original. The main entrance is centred beneath a large lancet Gothic window and between a pair of towers/steeples, the larger (east) one also serving as the bell tower. Matching all the windows in the building, its vents are Gothic in form, covered with wooden slats. The tops of both towers/steeples are flat, with crenellation around the perimeters.
Oddly, there is no cemetery at the church, the New London Cemetery being down the road to the west.