A UNESCO Fund Paid $164,070 to Keep Bermuda’s Oldest Church Standing. It Still Reached a “Crisis Point”

• St Peter’s Church in St George’s received $164,070 from the town’s UNESCO World Heritage Fund
• Payments between 2016 and 2021 covered windows, roofs, painting and accessibility
• The 2021 allocation was $56,000
• The parish said maintenance and repairs made up 18 per cent of its budget

Bermuda’s historic St Peter’s Church has relied on a heritage fund to help with its upkeep, but the money has covered only part of the need. The Royal Gazette reported on 31 December 2021 that the UNESCO World Heritage Fund, administered by the Corporation of St George’s, had paid out $1,572,550 between May 2016 and August 2021, including four payments totalling $164,070 to St Peter’s Church.

The payments funded a long list of works. In 2019 they covered tent fumigation and painting at the Edith Clair Spencer Hall and reprinting of the church brochure. In 2020 the fund paid for exterior window repainting, tower painting, an accessible pathway in the Black Graveyard, chandelier restoration and exterior lighting. The 2021 allocation of $56,000 covered heritage window refurbishment, painting, roof work and a cedar ramp for wheelchair access to the vestry.

Parish administrator Gillian Outerbridge said: “The $56,000 also included the painting of the church and church hall roof – booked and financed but not completed.” She said maintenance and repairs made up 18 per cent of the church’s budget, and that parishioners had been told the church had reached a financial “crisis point” because of pandemic-related falls in visitors and churchgoers.

Other recipients of the fund included dock works at Ordnance Island and Market Wharf and a ferry dock at Hunter’s Wharf, showing how the church competes with other heritage and infrastructure needs in the town.

St Peter’s, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, shows the double bind of historic churches: they are public treasures and tourist attractions, yet their day-to-day upkeep falls largely on a congregation whose income can collapse when visitors stop coming.

Jamaica has many churches of national heritage value, particularly in Spanish Town, Port Royal and the old parish capitals. The Bermuda example suggests a model: a dedicated heritage fund, drawing on tourism or municipal revenue, that churches can apply to for specific works. Jamaican church leaders, the Jamaica National Heritage Trust and diaspora heritage groups could explore such a fund, so that the burden of preserving shared history does not fall on congregations alone.

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