Their Majesties Chappell, St. Peter's Church, in St. George's,

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, is the oldest surviving Anglican church in continuous use outside the

British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...

. It is also reportedly the oldest continuously used

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

church in the

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...

. A UNESCO World Heritage Site (together with related fortifications), St. George's Town is the oldest surviving

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

settlement in the New World, having been settled by the

Virginia Company The Virginia Company was an English trading company chartered by King James I on 10 April 1606 with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of America. The coast was named Virginia, after Elizabeth I, and it stretched from present-day Mai ...

in 1612 (in the aftermath of the wrecking of its flagship, the

Sea Venture ''Sea Venture'' was a seventeenth-century English sailing ship, part of the Third Supply mission to the Jamestown Colony, that was wrecked in Bermuda in 1609. She was the 300 ton purpose-built flagship of the London Company and a highly unusual ...

, in Bermuda in 1609).

History

The church was established immediately after the founding of the settlement, although the original building, fashioned from wood with a

thatch Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...

ed roof, was quickly destroyed. Bermuda is famously stormy, and it was necessary to rebuild the church more than once over the following century, the final structure being of limestone walls, with a limestone slate roof lain on a framework of

Bermuda cedar ''Juniperus bermudiana'' is a species of juniper endemic to Bermuda. This species is most commonly known as Bermuda cedar, but is also referred to as Bermuda juniper (Bermudians refer to it simply as ''cedar''). Historically, this tree formed wo ...

. The oldest parts of the current structure date to 1620, though the building has been much expanded and improved since. 2012 marks the 400th year since the founding of St. Peter's Church. It is also the

Diamond Jubilee A diamond jubilee celebrates the 60th anniversary of a significant event related to a person (e.g. accession to the throne or wedding, among others) or the 60th anniversary of an institution's founding. The term is also used for 75th anniver ...

year of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. On 18 March 2012, the Queen granted St. Peter's the title ''Their Majesties' Chappell''.

The interior

The church's interior is simple, with exposed cedar beams (prior to the blight which virtually annihilated Bermuda's cedars in the 1940s and '50s, the wood was considered inexpensive and those who could afford to favoured more expensive, imported woods. Today, the endemic wood is scarce, priceless, and proudly displayed in those homes which have it). The font of the church is 500 years old, older than the settlement of Bermuda. The walls of the church have commemorative plaques on the inside, and there are gravestones set in the outsides, those of the notables who were considered worthy enough to be buried under the church floor, such as the printer of Bermuda's first newspaper ( The Bermuda Gazette), Joseph Stockdale, and

Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

George James Bruere George James Bruere (1720/21 – 10 September 1780) was the British Governor of Bermuda from 1764 until his death. Of all Bermuda's governors since 1612, his term of office was the longest. He had a difficult time during the American Revolutionar ...

, who died in office in 1780.

The exterior

The graveyard which surrounds the church has been filled for decades, all new burials taking place in the municipal graveyard on the far shore to the north of the town. Notable exceptions were Governor Sir

Richard Sharples Sir Richard Christopher Sharples, (6 August 1916 – 10 March 1973) was a British politician and Governor of Bermuda who was shot dead by assassins linked to a small militant Bermudian Black Power group called the Black Beret Cadre. The form ...

and his aide-de-camp, Captain Hugh Sayers, who were buried side by side in the east of the churchyard after their 1973 murders. An area of the yard to the west of the church was reserved for burying slaves, prior to the 1834 emancipation of slaves throughout the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

. As originally constructed, the church had no belfry, the bell being hung from an old-growth cedar directly behind the church. Although to all appearances dead, this tree was still standing until felled by Hurricane Fabian in 2003. The south-facing church and its yard sit well back, and somewhat higher than Duke of York Street, the main road that passes through St. George's in front of it. A high, wide flight of steps descend from the church to a small yard, or square, on the north side of the road. At this east side of this yard is the church hall, a small building which was increased in size by the addition of a second floor in the 1980s.

Parish

The church was established as the parish (for the town and the surrounding area) of the state church, the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...

. A system of

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one o ...

es was established throughout Bermuda, the parishes being both

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

divisions, each centred on a parish church, and

political Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

ones. The January, 1620, reconstruction of St. Peter's was overseen by

Nathaniel Butler Nathaniel Butler (born c. 1577, living 1639, date of death unknown) was an English privateer who later served as the colonial governor of Bermuda during the early 17th century. He had built many structures still seen in Bermuda today includin ...

. When the Parliament of Bermuda was created in 1620, it first met in St. Peter's, on 1 August, pending completion of its own dedicated home, the State House. The Church of England in Bermuda became grouped with that of Newfoundland, in the 19th Century, as a common

bishopric In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop. History In the later organization of the Roman Empire, the increasingly subdivided provinces were administratively associate ...

. With the building of the Hamilton Cathedral in 1894 (the year it was consecrated as such – it would not be completed 'til 1905), Bermuda attained its own bishopric. Had the capital not relocated to Hamilton from St. George's (which it did in 1815), St. Peter's might have become the cathedral. There had been an attempt to replace St. Peter's in the 19th. Century with a larger building at a new location. Begun in 1874, this building was for various reasons never completed. Today, the magnificent ruin of the ''Unfinished Church'', on Church Folly Lane, is a popular visitor attraction in St. George's.Bermuda Online
Bermuda's Town of St. George: The Unfinished Church In 1976, the Church of England in Bermuda became the

Anglican Church of Bermuda The Anglican Church of Bermuda (as the Church of England in the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda was retitled in 1978) is a single diocese consisting of nine parishes and is part of the Anglican Communion, though not a part of an ecclesias ...

, an extra-provincial diocese under the Archbishop of Canterbury.

References

External links

Official site

The Anglican Church of Bermuda Official site

Bermuda's Town of St. George: St. Peter's Church. {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Peters Church, Saint Georges Anglican church buildings in Bermuda Anglican Church in the Caribbean Religious organizations established in the 1610s St. George's, Bermuda