Christ Church Churchyard Cemetery is located on the grounds of Christ Church Anglican Church at 34-48 Church Street, Bonavista, NL. This eighteenth century graveyard is situated in an historically institutional area of town recognized for its collection of churches, schools and halls, and the designation encompasses the entire cemetery.
Formal Recognition Type
Municipal Heritage Building, Structure or Land
Heritage Value
Christ Church Churchyard Cemetery has been designated a municipal heritage site by the Town of Bonavista because it has spiritual, historic and aesthetic values.
Christ Church Churchyard Cemetery has spiritual and historic values as the oldest known consecrated cemetery associated with the Anglican faith in Bonavista. The earliest known headstone from the cemetery records a date of death in 1725, though there are likely many unmarked graves, and use of the site may predate the official establishment of the Bonavista Church of England in 1723. The earliest church erected on the grounds is unconfirmed, but successive churches were built in 1730, 1819, 1862, 1925, and the current one in 1978.
The Churchyard Cemetery has historic value as a physical record of Bonavista’s past, the gravemarkers serving as both historic records and artifacts on the landscape. A number of headstones record that the deceased were British immigrants, while others indicate that they served in the military. The gravemarkers are mainly chiseled, inscribed tablet headstones, though there are a number of column types. They are composed of materials common during the period in which most burials were performed at the cemetery (eighteenth to mid-twentieth centuries), including marble, limestone and sandstone. There are also a number of unsculpted fieldstone markers.
The Churchyard Cemetery has aesthetic value due to its siting in Bonavista’s cultural landscape, together with its blend of period human-made and natural elements. The cemetery is located on Church Street, historically an institutional area for churches, halls and schools, which retains much of its historic character and remains a central area of the town. The white painted, wooden picket fence along the front of the churchyard is in keeping with fence types historically typical of the community and of the site specifically. In addition to a number of mature cultivated deciduous trees around the perimeters of the cemetery, the natural topography includes a combination of low-growing wild plants and historically popular cultivated groundcover plants.
Source: Town council meeting minutes, Town of Bonavista, 2006/08/14
Character Defining Elements
Those landscape elements related to the cemetery’s function, age and cultural landscape value including:
-siting in historic area of town;
-preponderance of marble, sandstone, limestone and fieldstone materials of period gravemarkers;
-preponderance of tablet and column forms of the inscribed period gravemarkers;
-unsculpted, uninscribed fieldstone period gravemarkers;
-white painted, wooden picket fencing at front (Church Street) boundary;
-natural plant groundcover;
-and mature trees.
Notes
Two of the earliest suriving headstones from the cemetery are now housed inside the church: one of William Dare who died 1725/08/23, aged 46 years; and one of Thomas Addams “of Frampton near Dorchester” who died 1729/08/13, aged 26 years.
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