Glebe Lands

Glebe Lands. Historic Lower Saint George Street. The modern-day market in Annapolis Royal sits on land that for much of the town’s history was church property. The earliest Roman Catholic Church, built of stone, was located next to the fort and destroyed following Sir William Phips’ capture of Port-Royal in 1690. Its cemetery and ruins were incorporated into the expanded fort after 1702. For more than a decade afterwards, church services were held in rented rooms in town., In 1704 the French government purchased this site from Captain Claude-Sébastien de Villieu, who was returning to France. The existing dwelling was used as a presbytery, with plans for a church to be built on an adjoining lot donated to the Roman Catholic Church. Despite the promise of one thousand livres from the French king, Louis XIV, and an additional eight hundred livres pledged by parishioners, the new house of worship never got beyond the planning stage., Following the town’s final capture by the British in 1710, the property continued as glebe land, but of the Church of England, an arrangement made formal by grant to the garrison chaplain in 1732. In 1748, several contingents of New Englanders, among them John Gorham’s one hundred-man company of Rangers, were billeted her during the War of the Austrian Succession, a turbulent period when Annapolis Royal was successfully defended against several French and Aboriginal attacks., Throughout most of the mid-1700s, the glebe lands were occupied by military pensioners, soldiers’ widows, and newcomers to the town. Rents were paid annually to Rev. Thomas Wood, the deputy chaplain appointed in 1752, who had decided to remain in the newly-founded capital, Halifax. The line of dwelling that stretched from the northeast corner diagonally southwest to St. Anthony Street became known as ‘Pensioner(s)’ Row.’, The Reverend Mr. Wood moved to Annapolis Royal in 1764 as missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. For some time services were held in a merchant’s store. In 1775 construction was started on St. Luke’s Anglican Church. It was not completed in Rev. Wood’s lifetime (he died in 1778) and in fact was not ready for use when the Loyalists Reverend Jacob Bailey arrived in 1782, due to the difficulty in obtaining materials during the American Revolution. The 500 Loyalists who had arrived with Rev. Bailey were augmented by another 2500 refugees who flooded the town in the fall of 1783. Hundreds were housed in the unfinished church which finally opened for divine service on Easter Day, 1784. It did not survive for long however, and was replaced in 1821 by the present St. Luke’s opposite Fort Anne., The Church of England sold this property to accommodate the extension of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway to town in 1869. That development necessitated the removal of some two dozen buildings to the periphery of the former glebe lands and to St. James’ Street. For the next fifty years, this site was a railway yard stocking lumber for shipment abroad, and the location of at train station.