On the Macqueripe Road in Tucker Valley, Chaguaramas, Trinidad, a little church stands alone- her only companions, the whispering leaves of the bamboo plants that now tower above her, and the ghosts of past occupants who found rest in the cemetery that stands just beyond her walls. Oh, the stories they must tell!
Once a small church with an established membership, the St Chad's Anglican Church is now a relic of a distant past on the tiny island on the southern end of the Caribbean archipelago.
The church was first constructed as a wooden building in the 1850s when the owner of the neighboring Mount Pleasant Estate in Diego Martin, Daniel Cave, donated the land, 22,800 square feet, to the Anglican Church. One can, of course, imagine the reverence and excitement of the early churchgoers then.
18 years later, however, the building fell into disrepair and was demolished. With Cave's help, a new building was constructed in 1875. This building again fell into a state of decay and a third building, this current structure, was constructed by the end of 1915, this time with the support of the Tuckers who owned the majority of the estates in the area, and with the help of the residents of the neighboring Mount Pleasant Village.
For years, the St Chad AC Church was a proud building with a wide driveway, steps and a beautiful flower garden near the front. Here's a picture preserved by the church.
Inside, one can imagine neat pews, each holding hymnals for the faithful, a wide aisle, and the nave where the clergy would sit.
Today, the shutters on the windows are almost all gone, but one can still picture the rays of sunshine peaking through the slats perhaps during an evening prayer session, and imagine the sounds of praise that once danced along these walls and floated through these windows. Now, only birds sing here.
The St Chad's Anglican Church continued in operation for years until Chaguaramas was converted into a military base occupied by the US Army in 1941. It was never reopened.
Today, nature marches closer, and as the church, standing a short distance away from the island's popular Bamboo Cathedral, rests in the shade of bamboo plants, the building which must have seen more than its fair share of christenings, baptisms and weddings, is now remembered primarily for its dead.
In the neighboring graveyard, among scattered concrete crosses marking the final resting place of the unnamed who, it is believed, once worked on the estate and who certainly once worshipped here, there lies a lone tomb and on it, an inscription in the name of the Tuckers' daughter, Amelia Tripp, who was also the wife of the man who installed the first electricity generating plant on the island, Edgar Tripp, and who died in childbirth in 1879, three years after their marriage. It is believed that she was just 23 years old at the time of her passing.
Note- This post continues the blog started on @trifecta-tt about old and historical structures in the Caribbean.