Description of Historic Place

Saint Peter's and Saint John's Anglican Church is located on the corner of Highway 205 (Shore Road) and Ross Road. This wooden board and batten style church was built in 1883. The building and property are included in the provincial designation.

Heritage Value

St. Peter's and St. John's is valued because it is one of the four surviving churches designed by Reverend Simon Gibbons, Canada's first Inuit priest, that best exemplifies the style advocated by the Cambridge Camden Society (Ecclesiological Society).

St. Peter's and St. John's was the second of six churches built by Simon Gibbons during his Nova Scotian ministry from his ordination in 1877 to his death in 1896. Gibbons was half Inuit, brought up in the Newfoundland Church of England Widows and Orphans Asylum of St. John's and educated at King's College in Windsor, Nova Scotia. There is a possibility that Gibbons went to Cambridge University; he was in England on two occasions to raise money for building churches at Neil's Harbour and St. Peter's and St. John's in Baddeck. It is likely that it was there that he came into contact with the Cambridge Camden Society (Ecclesiological Society), whose influence on church architecture was most marked.

St. Peter's and St. John's was built in 1883. The ordeals of traveling in late nineteenth-century Cape Breton took their toll on Gibbons and in 1885 he transferred to Lockeport, then on to Parrsboro, both also in Nova Scotia.

Of the four Gibbons churches still standing, St. Peter's and St. John's best exemplifies the style advocated by the Ecclesiological Society and its supporters. In attempting to recreate the spirit of medieval styles in rural Canada, believers such as Gibbons had to find the inspiration and method to do so in wood and with simplicity.

The most distinctive aspect of Gibbon's churches is the helm roof on their church towers, as seen at St. Peter's and St. John's. This board and batten style church has buttresses, pointed arch windows and a round-headed window on the east elevation.

Set slightly back off the road leading into Baddeck, St. Peter's and St. John's still holds regular services.

Source: Provincial Heritage Program property files, no. 124.

Character-Defining Elements

Character-defining elements of St. Peter's and St. John's include:

- wood construction;
- board and batten exterior siding;
- tower with helm roof;
- buttresses;
- end chimney;
- pointed arch windows;
- round-headed window in the east elevation.