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Kilworth United Church is one of the oldest and loveliest churches in the London area.Built in 1850, it's one of the few buildings of the once-thriving village of Kilworth. The village, when the church was built, was home to about 200 inhabitants. The rapid flow of the river past Kilworth provided an ideal site for industry that relied on water power in the days before electricity.
Kilworth at the time had a distillery, a wool-carding and cloth-making mill, a sawmill, two cabinet-making firms, a tannery, two saddle, trunk and harness makers, a grist mill, two hotels and other stores and services.
The little stone church was erected as an Episcopal Methodist Church, a rival for the earlier Wesleyan Methodist Church across the road and slightly to the east beside one of the oldest cemeteries in Middlesex County.
The Episcopal Methodists were from a branch of Methodism that had taken root in the United States and began moving into Canada as settlement pushed into Western Ontario. The Wesleyan Methodists were more closely affiliated with the original British church founded by John Wesley. The Episcopal Methodist church prevailed as the prime meeting house for area Methodists, while the Wesleyan church became a Sunday School, a schoolhouse and finally a home before falling into disrepair.
In 1925, Methodist churches in Canada joined with the Congregationalists and most Presbyterians to form a new church — the United Church of Canada.
The Kilworth building you see today has rock and stone walls that are two feet thick. Many are hand-hewn, petrified rocks from the nearby Wishing Well spring. Petrified objects can be found in the rock walls of the church, particularly at the four corners.
On the front wall can be found imprints of ancient beech tree leaves as well as of sticks and frogs. In 1890, A Sunday school was added at the rear of the structure where many church suppers have also been held and more recently a kitchen and washrooms were added. The stone entrance was created in 1939, the same year electricity was installed.
Except for changes to the pulpit, the sanctuary has remained largely unchanged since the church was built, remaining simple and Spartan. Our congregation currently serves about 80 families.
By Chip Martin