Pereaux Baptist Church

The first building to serve this congregation was built in the meeting house style, a common style among Baptists in early to mid-nineteenth century Atlantic Canada. This style is often characterized by its small and rather plain facility, with no steeple, and gothic embellishments. The front entrance was often on the gable end, with either two entrances, one on the left and right sides of the front façade, one meant for the men and the other for women; or a centrally placed doorway. It is unusual to see a meeting house of this size, and it was unlike many of the early meeting houses in this part of Nova Scotia. It resembled the Covenanter's Church in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia, which is the oldest Presbyterian church in Canada. Both churches were designed in the New England meeting house style. This church was characterized by the rectangular form with three-bay front and entrance on the long side, characteristic of the 18th century New England meeting house, although the second storey windows and galleried interior were atypical. The interior featured beautifully moulded, panelled woodwork in the high pulpit and octagonal sounding board. On the side of the church there was a small addition to the main structure, which housed the main door, on the front façade and featured hood mouldings and corner pilasters.

This church is widely believed to have been built in 1844, with its charter membership in 1862 being thirty-one members, sixteen of which resided in Pereau(x). This building burned and the current building (2022) was built a few months later in 1898. The 1898 building was constructed on a piece of land that belonged to Daniel Sanford. An interesting feature is the original cistern style baptismal font. It is situated under the choir loft and can be accessed by a hinged trap door in the floor. Made from bricks and mortar with a stairway on one end, it measures four feet by six feet and is about four feet deep. Water was heated and emptied by buckets to fill it for baptisms. It was used until a new baptismal font was built in the 1990’s. The original chandeliers that had cast iron buckets filled with rockets for ballasts are still in the attic.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s the members of the congregation dug a basement out by hand. Cherry Hall was added to the west side of the church, using funds that Dr. Millard Ross Cherry had saved from his salary as minister. It has a full basement with Sunday school classrooms while the main floor has a pastor’s study, kitchen, multipurpose room, and washroom.

The church marks a transitional phase in Baptist church architecture around the turn of the twentieth century from a symmetrical design, usually in the Gothic Revival style, with a centrally placed steeple on the gable end, to an asymmetrical design with the steeple place usually on the side of the structure. Many of these churches with an asymmetrical design are also based on a modified “Akron Plan,” so named because it was first used in Akron, Ohio in 1867. This design abandoned the traditional long, straight, and narrow sanctuary with a central aisle in favor of a shallower and wider sanctuary with a sloping floor and pews which sweep in a half-circle and are broken into three sections. The purpose of these features was to enable everyone to see and hear clearly in a time when sound and projection systems were nonexistent. Also typical of the Akron style are sliding walls which allow the gallery to be closed off when not needed, and doors on the Sunday School rooms which completely open the front wall of the classroom. In a true Akron style Sunday School, the classes would open these doors completely so that the superintendent would be in full view to address the whole Sunday school. Doors were then closed for the class time. The sliding door could also be opened to enlarge the seating capacity of the sanctuary.

Information from Nelson Labor and Linda Hart, Kings County Churches, Kentville: Kings Historical Society, 2014, and the church.