St John’s Church history

Jamaica Gleaner | 2025-12-07 | Original Article

“175 years seems like a good long time for this church building to have been in existence. But when you consider that worship has been taking place in this place for 300 years (give or take a few years), then you realise that the 175 is just a mark in the road. The worship journey will continue long after we’re gone. And even 300 years will seem small, as future generations look back on the history of our remarkable church,” Allison Morris writes in the 175th anniversary magazine of the Black River Anglican Church, in 2013.

 

 

“The church seems to have been reconstructed a number of times. In 1774, Edward Long mentions it in his History of Jamaica, as a ‘handsome edifice of brick, lately rebuilt’. By 1802, it is described as being ‘shabby and much neglected’ in the diary of Lady Nugent (wife of the then governor of Jamaica). With Black River’s tendency to get hit by earthquake, hurricane and fire, it’s no wonder that the church had to be reconstructed from time to time!”

 

And it will have to be reconstructed again! As, on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 28, Category 5 Hurricane Melissa decimated it, leaving only the belfry intact, towering over a landscape of utter destruction. The historic town of Black River was ‘bombed’, it seemed.

 

The rubble of bricks, board, glass and twisted metal looked like the aftermath of an explosion, like the one that went off in Morris’ head when she saw the decimation for the first time. She was baptised there, played the organ there, and it was one of the stops on her Way Back When Black River Heritage Tour. But, long before baptism, organ-playing and tours, the church had been a fixture on the Black River landscape, like an eternal sentinel watching over the town’s evolution.

 

“From early reports on the state of the Anglican Church in Jamaica, we know that the original church that was on this spot was built after 1679, but before 1723. We find it mentioned in the 1739 will of John Campbell, who left £50 for the purchase of a communion cup for the Black River Church,” Morris says.

 

“The tablet on the church tower gives us an insight into the building of St John as we know it today. A section of it reads as follows: ‘The first stone of this church was laid on the 13 day of July in the year of our Lord 1837’ … The man at the helm in 1837 was the Reverend Thomas Pierce Williams. … A tablet to his memory can be found in the church.”

 

Pre- and post-Emancipation society in Black River, like everywhere in Jamaica, was divided into class, capital and colour. The church was no exception. Its members were mainly white and moneyed, owning and trading in enslaved Africans. The church itself was owner of enslaved people who worked on the over 200 acres of church land (Glebe lands) in the Brompton area.

 

The building was reconstructed in 1838, Emancipation year. Gradually, the number of brown and black members grew. Morris says, “The church records from the late 1700s indicate that many free non-whites were interred in the churc yard.”

 

“The church bell and clock date from this period. The bell was cast in London in 1848 at Whitechapel Foundry. The clock is dated 1839. The church was consecrated as ‘St John’s Church’ in 1843 by the bishop of Jamaica, Dr Christopher Lipscombe.”

 

After Emancipation, the church became very involved in education. Munro College and Hampton School were built in the 1850s from bequests left by Robert Hugh Munro and Caleb Dickenson. A few other schools were established in the cure.

 

The church was one of the first buildings in Black River to receive electricity (in the early 1890s), but electric power went away when Black River lost electricity in 1899. The 1890s through to the early 1900s saw a time of major development at St John’s, under the leadership of Reverend Charles Melville.

 

Melville designed a new roof, had choir stalls built, and the external concrete stairs to the gallery added. He was responsible for a new church organ, built in England about 1911, and installed in 1915. That organ was shattered to pieces in Melissa’s windy mayhem, no more musical winds to pass through the mouths of its pipes.

 

Before the installation of the organ, there was more destruction. The impact of the earthquake that strongly rocked Kingston in 1907 was felt in other parts of the island. St John’s was damaged to the point where the building had to be repaired in 1908-1909.

 

“There have been a few alterations to the church building in the last 50 years. The marble font, which was originally at the back of the church, was moved to its present location in 1968. The church was reroofed in 1980. Successive ministers and congregations up to the present time have made it their duty to preserve and maintain this beautiful historical monumentrof whose longevity we lovingly celebrate this year,” Morris writes.

 

But, all of that effort came crumbling down on October 28. Moris is still standing, and she has been picking up some of the pieces from the rubble for posterity. Her association with St John’s is a family story deeply etched in the history of Black River and the history St John’s Anglican Church.

 

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