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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 02 2023
THE RIVER VIEW
St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Hillsborough, which dates from 1896.
HERITAGE
History and outreach – and romance – meet at St. Mary’s
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Peter Jubb and the church’s deacon, The Reverend Barbara Haire.
erhaps it was inevitable that a shipbuilding community would bring to life a church that mirrors the hull of a ship. Well, at least the roof. “A lot of the people who built the church were shipwrights and ship’s carpenters, because you had that expertise within the area. There was a whole wealth of woodworking and building knowledge here,” explains lay reader Peter Jubb of St. Mary’s Anglican Church in Hillsborough. Those shipwrights put a
unique stamp on the church’s interior. Looked at from the floor of the nave, the roof “resembles the upside down hull of a ship. The structure, the way the struts are built, is exactly what you would find there. The logic was, if a ship can withstand the pounding of the seas, then an upturned ship can withstand the weather of Albert County. “It has been proven so because it is still strong today.” The sturdiness of the roof, with its robust central line resembling a keel braced by
solid timbers, is offset by the delicacy of the stained glass that graces the sanctuary. The window was imported from Venice by Joseph Tomkins, the nascent church’s most prominent citizen. He had come to Hillsborough from New York to lead what was at the time the area’s primary industrial concern, the gypsum mine and associated plaster works of the Albert Manufacturing Company. Tomkins is also believed to be responsible for another of Continued on page 9
