Description of Historic Place

The Port Medway Meeting House is a small, domestic-like wood framed building, errected in 1832 by the Port Medway Free Will Baptist congregation. It is located at the mouth of the Port Medway River in Port Medway, NS. Both the land and the building are included in the Provincial designation.

Heritage Value

The Port Medway Meeting House is valued for its age; as one of only a handful of small meeting houses left in Nova Scotia; for its continuous use as a place of worship; and for its relatively unaltered interior and exterior.

The Free Will Baptists of Port Medway organized a congregation in 1825 and had a formal meeting house built by 1832. Free Will Baptists evolved from the Congregational New Lights movement of the late eighteenth century in New England, brought to Nova Scotia by immigrants from New England. The Port Medway Meeting House was used by the local Free Will Baptist congregation until 1865 when it was sold to the Wesleyan Methodist Church, which became the United Church of Canada in 1925.

The Port Medway Meeting House is a relatively unchanged simple wood famed building with a domestic exterior appearance, one of only a few unaltered meeting houses in the province. The interior arrangement of the pews, whereby they face out from the walls and are parallel to the central aisle is a unique feature of the Port Medway Meeting House.

Source: Provincial Heritage Property files, no. 64.

Character-Defining Elements

Character-defining elements of the Port Medway Meeting House relate to its relatively unaltered appearance and include:

- simple, unadorned façade;
- original pews arranged facing out from walls and parallel to central aisle;
- locally made and original iron work;
- gable roof;
- wood frame;
- wooden siding.