Built on a Planter’s Donated Land: St Mary’s Oldest Anglican Church Turns 180

• Holy Trinity in Retreat, St Mary, stands on land donated in 1828
• The church took seven more years to build and complete
• It is the mother church of four other Anglican congregations
• A fire more than a decade earlier forced an interior rebuild

Holy Trinity Church in Retreat, St Mary, marked its 180th anniversary in November 2015, and its story says as much about land as it does about faith. The Gleaner reported that the church was built on land donated in 1828 by Henry Rigg, a wealthy English plantation owner, on the site of his old sugar estate.

It took another seven years to put up and finish the building, which went on to become St Mary’s first Anglican church and remains the oldest Anglican church in the parish. It is admired as an example of Georgian architecture, and its construction drew on brick, cut stone, concrete and wood.

Holy Trinity is also the mother church for four others: St Matthew’s in Boscobel, St John’s in Gayle, St Andrew’s in Labyrinth and St Margaret’s Mission in Clifton Lodge. In property terms, a single gift of estate land in the 1820s ended up anchoring a small network of congregations across the parish.

The building has not come through the years untouched. Tamiel Scott, the church’s treasurer and a member of its committee, told the paper: “We had a fire over 10 years ago.” The outside of the church stayed the same, but the interior, which had been stone, was smoothed over with concrete when it was rebuilt. The congregation now numbers about 80 active members, who keep up Sunday School, a youth fellowship and the Mothers’ Union.

For Jamaican churches, and for families at home and abroad who give to them, Holy Trinity shows how much of the island’s church property started with a planter’s gift of land. It also shows what it costs to hold on to it. Old buildings need upkeep, repairs after a fire and a small congregation willing to pay for both. Anyone thinking about the future of heritage churches, whether in St Mary or across the island, should start with clear title, proper insurance and a plan for maintenance. A church 180 years old can outlast the estate it was built on, but only if each generation keeps looking after it.

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