The First Anglican Cemetery and War Memorial Site is located directly off Main Road in Arnold’s Cove. The grassy fenced cemetery contains mainly white marble headstones and adjoins the community’s war memorial site, which features a white marble monument. The designation includes all land within the fence surrounding the cemetery, the monuments, grave markers and other physical features contained within, plus the adjoining war memorial monument area defined by the footprint of the monument itself and the wooden platform erected around it.
Formal Recognition Type
Municipal Heritage Building, Structure or Land
Heritage Value
The First Anglican Cemetery and War Memorial Site has been designated a municipal heritage site by the Town of Arnold’s Cove because of its spiritual, historic, social and aesthetic value.
The First Anglican Cemetery has spiritual value due to its association with the Anglican religion in Arnold’s Cove. The War Memorial has spiritual value as a physical manifestation of a tribute to Arnold’s Cove war dead.
The cemetery has historic value as the town’s oldest known cemetery and because it was part of the first community infrastructure at Arnold’s Cove, which included a church, school and the cemetery circa 1888. Neither the church nor school remains today, but the cemetery was used for burials until the Second Anglican Cemetery was established in 1915, and occasionally after that. The First Anglican Cemetery remains on the landscape as a reminder of the community’s early years.
The cemetery also has historic value because its monuments and extant headstones contain historic and genealogical type information. Jonathan Boutcher is credited with the leading role in the establishment of the first church, school and cemetery in Arnold’s Cove, and an inscribed bell from the former Anglican church has been erected at the First Anglican Cemetery as a monument to his efforts. The community war memorial was erected in 1921, adjoins the cemetery at the entrance gateway, and enhances its significance. This marble monument has historic value because it stands on the former site of the community’s first Church of England church, and because it memorializes Arnold’s Cove’s veterans. It also has social value as a focal point of the community’s annual Remembrance Day ceremony, for which residents gather around this spot.
The First Anglican Cemetery has aesthetic value because its marble monuments and gravemarkers in tablet or column forms set in the grassy, fenced land evokes the nineteenth to early twentieth century period during which it was in use for burials. The style and white marble material of the war memorial monument is visually cohesive with the cemetery. Together, the cemetery and monument form a distinctive landscape feature in a very visible area along Arnold’s Cove’s main road, near the oceanside, in the historic heart of the community.
Source: Town of Arnold’s Cove Regular Council Meeting Motion 145/2008 October 29, 2008.
Character Defining Elements
Those elements which contribute to the site’s historic and aesthetic value, including:
-style, placement and materials of gravemarkers;
-style, placement and materials of other monuments, including the bell;
-inscriptions of gravemarkers and monuments;
-placement, inscription, style, and white marble material of the war memorial monument;
-grassy topography;
-existence of fencing to contain the site, and
-location of site.
Notes
The first community infrastructure in Arnold’s Cove consisted of a church, the First Anglican Cemetery, and school. The school moved to a new location in 1911 and in 1921, a war memorial was erected on the site of the former school. The church was enlarged in 1925 and remained in use until the 1960’s when it was sold and dismantled. Only portions of its concrete foundation remain.
Some of the first documented names associated with Arnold’s Cove are shown in a church report from 1849. They are John and Jonathan Boutcher, Ambrose Guy, and Phillip, Richard and William Hollett. Although the headstones remaining today do not indicate it, the First Anglican Cemetery contains the remains of some of the pioneers of Arnold’s Cove, Englishmen from the Dorset region of Great Britain, along with their wives and children, most in unmarked graves. Surnames on extant headstones include Adams, Boutcher, Guy, Haynes, Hines, Hollett and Peach.
In 1990, through private monetary contributions, the cemetery received a face lift. Fallen headstones were repaired, the church bell restored and mounted and a bench constructed. A ceremony of rededication was performed by the Anglican priest in September, 1990.
The War Memorial in Arnold’s Cove was unveiled on August 7th, 1921, in memory of the soldiers who died during World War I. The inscription on the Monument reads: “Erected by the people of Arnold’s Cove to perpetuate the memory of the young men of this place who lost their lives in the Great War 1914-1918. May they rest in peace.” Veterans memorialized include W. H. Peach, Pte. W. Adams, Pte. A. Guy, and Pte. G. Rose. The monument was repaired in 1991 with donations from Boutcher and Adams families, and a wooden platform was erected around it in recent years. Armistice Day (Remembrance Day) has been celebrated at the monument with wreath-laying every year from 1921, except for 1996 when rain forced the dedication of the wreaths to take place at a church.
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