ST. JOHN’S CHURCH: A Peterborough landmark
Continuing a look at local history along Brock Street
St. John’s Church is Peterborough’s most storied church and is the oldest building on Brock Street. Since the 1830s the church buildings have occupied the centre of the block on the east side of Brock between Sheridan and Water, and down to Hunter Street. Every building in the block has an intimate connection with the church. The church formerly was surrounded by cottages of which the earliest was for many years a law office, sometime home to the Chamber of Commerce.
Now the largest buildings on the block are the Churchill apartments along Sheridan and the St. John’s Centre along Water Street. The St. John’s Centre proved an attractive architectural addition boosted by the series of bay windows that echoed the windows of the long-time Sun Life Building at the Hunter Street end of the block along Water. Most of the Sun-Life Building was lost in a major downtown fire in 1996.
The grand house at the corner of Sheridan and Brock was built in 1912 by Peterborough’s premier architect, John E. Belcher to be the Rectory, the home of the Rector of Peterborough, the incumbent at St. John’s Church. The urban legend was that it was built to the home of the Bishop of Peterborough if ever an Anglican Diocese of Peterborough were created; such was envisaged in 1875 but never approved. The Diocese of Toronto had been reduced in size by the creations of the Dioceses of Niagara, Huron and Ontario, and the Diocesan Synod of the day decided enough was enough.
It is possible that the Rectory was intended for wider church uses from the start but it was home to the Anglican minister. It was divided in the 1930s to create a nearly self-contained apartment running from the basement to the attic. In some years, the apartment served as the home for the curate, or assistant minister, but always as a residence for people closely affiliated to the church. The main part of the rectory served every rector from the Rev. Canon John Cheyne Davidson to the Rev. Canon Ron Davidson.
Still, the heart of the block was the church and the parish hall.
St. John’s Church was built between 1835 and 1839. It was a stone building in an early Gothic style; it was one of the first stone Gothic Anglican churches in North America. The window and door openings tended to be rounded rather than pointed at the top. But most striking was the floor arrangement. The meeting house layout allowed for a maximum number of listeners, and, with the gallery across the back , could accommodate allegedly 800 people. The gallery housed the organ and the choir. The clergyman wore a simple garb. Without a centre aisle there was little occasion for processions.
In 1882, the church was changed in dramatic ways. The clock tower became a bell tower, and the roofline of the tower was changed from spinets to a battlemented parapet. The tower now had a perpendicular window, a Canadian first.
The tracery of the new lancet windows was in the Perpendicular style. The side windows of the nave were replaced with triple-light windows inside a single opening. The glass was dominated by the mass-produced diamond-shaped pieces of glass.
At the front, the church was changed from three doors to one. Inside, the church had one central aisle instead of two. A.P. Poussette, church warden and lawyer, directed the scenic layout of the circular driveway on the Hunter Street side of the building.
The wall at the front of the nave was removed to add a chancel and sanctuary.
Other changes besides necessary maintenance and repair followed over the years. The People’s Chime was installed in 1911 as the city’s gift to mark the coronation of George V and Queen Mary. The Chime is played on commemorative occasions, and just recently it was played by John Earnshaw to mark the hundred year anniversary of the Armistice that ended war.
The vestry was expanded in 1907 to include an upstairs room that now serves as the parish archives. Over the years it served as a choir room, a chapel and as an office.
The church is older than the Sunday School building. The earliest Sunday School rooms which were adjacent to the church were removed after a new free-standing building was built to the west in 1878. This building was extended with major additions in 1890 and 1926. In 1957, significant changes were made to the existing buildings which were joined by an interesting addition that included the chapel and more Sunday School rooms. Over the years, the increased space has been used for offices, choir room, and several improvements to what is now called the Guild Room.
Most recently Under One Roof has been based in this wing. The church has been doing social outreach ever since 1826 when once a month the Sunday collection supported the Widows and Orphans Fund.
The language on the historic plaque in front of the church claims this was a typical example of a Victorian Gothic style church. It is better to say that the church reflects the many changes in the understanding of the meaning of Gothic architecture across many decades. Modern understanding of neo-Gothic architecture was largely defined in the 1840s, but St. John’s was built earlier. Then it was restored in 1882 to reflect a more complete understanding of Gothic architecture, rooted in the styles from the Middle Ages, and specifically the 12th century. Many Norman features in the tower were changed.
Most fascinating are the changes over time to the windows. The window openings at St. John’s are comparatively wide, and originally carried seven lights representative of seven candles, of the seven churches founded by St. John the Evangelist. With the changes in 1882, the original window openings remained the same but had triple windows, with coloured glass, placed within the opening. New windows met the standard for Gothic-style windows: three windows that were thin and tall, which were made to look wider by the beveling of the openings.
I have often given tours of the church and always demonstrate the ways in which architecture reflects the views of changing cultures. The architecture and the theology were interconnected, and the building is not well understood considering the material features without the spiritual.
Two buildings that were long part of the Brock Street streetscape were removed as part of the building of the St. John’s Centre. The small white cottage from the 1840s may have been for a short while the home of Isabella Valancy Crawford, one of Canada’s most respected Victorian writers. Valancy lived in many places in her short life, spending her last years in Toronto, closer to the publishing firms.
The other was a two-storey insulbrick house which in my memory was the home of Mrs. Coleman, whose family had run a catering business at Brock and George Street.
The site of St. John’s Church was granted to the churchwardens in 1833 from the military reserve that also provided the site for the Court House and Victoria Park. Peter Robinson agreed that this site close to and overlooking the downtown was the perfect place for an Anglican church.