St. Charles church shuts its doors

St. Charles Anglican Church on Ostrander Road is the oldest church in Tillsonburg and area. The church was closed earlier this year due to declining enrolment and increasing insurance costs. (Jeff Helsdon Photo)

Jeff Helsdon, Editor

The oldest church in the Tillsonburg area closed its doors earlier this year.

St. Charles Anglican Church, a place of worship on Ostrander Road between Ostrander and Springford, was built in 1844. Although renovations have taken place and it has been bricked, the building is original to the time pre-Confederation and dates before any places of worship were built in Tillsonburg.

Rev. Thomas Green was the first Anglican minister to visit the area in February 1837. St. Charles was established after the Hon. Rt. Rev. Charles Stewart established the base for his travelling mission in Simcoe. He covered the counties of Norfolk, Oxford, and Elgin, establishing 14 missions. Congregations in Burford and Dereham wanted their own ministers in their own churches. In 1837, before returning to England, Stewart sent plans for building a church in Dereham to John Burn.

Burn held services in his home, and later he and neighbour John Wardle both donated two acres of land for the site of the new church and cemetery.

When Bishop John Strachan of Toronto held a consecration service for the church a year after its opening, it was dedicated to the memory of Stewart, who became the Bishop of Quebec before returning to England, where he died.

Originally a frame structure, one of the renovations saw the change to the current brick on the exterior of the building. Other renovations saw the church enlarged and the original boxed-in pews removed.

Fast-forward to 1989, and St. Charles was deemed a “chapel of ease.” This meant there were no regular services, but services were held on Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Then, with only five families remaining – the Monks, Eckers, Milmines, Pettmans, and Fletchers – the difficult decision was made to deconsecrate the church earlier this year.

"Technically, we can’t call it a church as far as the Diocese of Huron (of the Anglican Church of Canada) is concerned,” said Jeff Monk, the last warden of the church and a distant relative of John Burn. “If you go back far enough, my ancestors donated the land half of it was built on.”

Jeff explained, “It got to a point where basically we didn’t have the attendance to maintain it any more as an ongoing church.”

“We were all getting older and running out of energy to keep it up,” his wife Diane added.

Today, the building is in good shape for its age, but upkeep meant cutting the grass around the church and cemetery. There is no indoor plumbing in the church, and propane heating is an update from the oil stove in the front of the church when Jeff was young, and the wood stove in the back that predated that. The stained-glass windows aren’t the inlaid ones like in many churches in town, but are just coloured glass on the top with shaded panes on the bottom.

“Very little has changed in the last 100 years,” Jeff said.

In addition, a huge jump in the cost of insurance – from $300 to $3,000 – put maintaining the church beyond the offerings of the remaining families.

“If you saw some new people coming in, it would be different,” Diane remarked.

The Monks now attend St. John’s Anglican in Tillsonburg, which St. Charles was affiliated with. They say members there were supportive of St. Charles and sad about the closure.

Amongst the memorabilia still in the church was the original letter written by Stewart in the 1830s. Diane noted it was rare, if not unique, for a church to be named after someone who wasn’t actually a saint.

“He wasn’t a saint, but they decided to call it St. Charles after him,” she said.

As far as they know, this is the only church named St. Charles in existence. The letter from Stewart has been removed from the church for safekeeping.

The building will now be offered for sale by the Anglican Church of Canada. A Spanish church has been renting it, and although not involved in the discussions, the Monks said this might be one of two groups interested in purchasing it.

“We are in the process of finding out what’s involved in that from the diocese,” Jeff said.

The cemetery contains stones dating back to the 1830s, with some of the original families such as Kellett, Burn, Ostrander, and Fewster. Jeff wasn’t sure of the future of the cemetery, hoping it would go with the church if it’s sold.