Description of Historic Place

St. Luke's Anglican Church is a Gothic Revival-influenced structure located at the corner of Cedar Hill Road and Cedar Hill Cross Road in the Quadra area of Saanich. This historic site also includes a graveyard.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of St. Luke's Anglican Church is associated with its development within its neighbourhood context. Quadra, located directly north of the Victoria-Saanich border, is a large urban neighbourhood created from subdivisions of its early farms. Much of the south part of Quadra was originally W.F. Tolmie's Cloverdale Farm, just one of the large farms in the area cut from the forest by the 1850s. Tolmie was a prominent local surgeon, Hudson's Bay Company officer, politician and major early landowner in this area of Saanich.

Built in 1888, St. Luke's Anglican Church is valued as one of the area's early religious buildings. Constructed for the first settlers of the Saanich Peninsula, it is a significant indication of the extension of ecclesiastical outreach beyond the historic epicentre of the young city of Victoria. This church served members of the Church of England who lived well beyond the city limits in the late nineteenth century.

St. Luke's Anglican Church is significant for its architecture, which represents a Gothic Revival influence, one of the favoured architectural expressions for contemporary religious structures in B.C. The design of this building is representative of its architect, Edward Mallandaine Sr. (1827-1905), who constructed a number of Victoria's similar early religious buildings. It is significant that the Gothic architectural tradition of the Church of England is expressed in a typically Canadian way, through the use of cedar instead of stone, that is relevant to the adaptation of early building techniques to accommodate local materials and reflects the importance of the Arts and Crafts tradition. The evolution of the church is reflected in twentieth-century additions and the eclecticism of stained glass windows added over time and the wood carvings found in the interior.

Source: Heritage Planning Files, District of Saanich

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of St. Luke's Anglican Church include its:
- landmark location of the building, at the crossroads Cedar Hill Cross Road and Cedar Hill Road
- form, scale and massing
- bell tower and spire
- fieldstone foundation, drop siding, corner boards and stringcourse about two-thirds up the wall
- Gothic Revival elements, including pointed arch paired windows with a quatrefoil above each pair, steeply sloped gable roof, and tall pyramidal, bellcast bell tower emphasizing verticality
- historic interior elements, including authentic wooden pews made from local wood, stained glass windows and wood carvings
- historic graveyard