Churches

Introduction

HOLY TRINITY CHURCH AND CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL

In 1847 a room 27’ 5” x 18’ in a large wooden building at 2 Villiers Street was appropriated for divine service. Governor Rennie later enlarged it to seat 150, by including a part formerly used as a hospital, and had it equipped with an oak pulpit, reading desk, communion table, service of plate and velvet cover. The new room was 42 feet long x 18 feet wide and used on weekdays as the schoolroom. A small adjoining room 12 feet by 8 feet was used as the Chaplain’s vestry and contained an iron chest which held the registers. By the end of 1855 divine service was performed temporarily in the eastern wing of the stone Exchange Building on Ross Road. Reverend W H Stirling was consecrated as the first Bishop of the Falkland Islands 21 December 1869 and on 14 January 1872 Holy Trinity Church became the Mother Church of the Diocese. The Reverend Lowther Brandon arrived 19 March 1877 to take up the appointment of Colonial Chaplain and soon after his arrival, with the backing of Bishop Stirling, began to agitate for a proper church. A Church Building Committee was formed in 1882 and a subscription list opened. A peat slip happened in 1886 which stove in the south wall of the Exchange Building which subsequently had to be demolished and services were temporarily held in a sail loft in Marmont Row. On 28 February 1887 Special Grant 303 was issued to The Clergy and Laity of the Church of England for the site of a church. The foundation stone for Christ Church Cathedral was laid on the site 6 March 1890 by Bishop Stirling and the Cathedral was consecrated on Sunday 21 February 1892.

ST MARY’S CATHOLIC CHURCH

Although a church wasn’t opened until June 1873, weekly gatherings where Catholics could meet on Sundays for prayers and have their children instructed in their faith were held in private homes in Stanley from the early 1850s and between 1857 and 1873 six priests paid brief summer visits to the Falkland Islands. The first resident priest, Fr James Foran, arrived in 1875. In 1886 he had the church removed from Pump Green on Dean Street to Ross Road. On 12 February 1899 the foundation stone of a new church, the present St Mary’s, was laid and a prefabricated building “Church No 19” supplied by Boulton & Paul was built north of the existing church which then became St Mary’s School. In 1952 the church was erected as an Apostolic Prefecture. In 1986 Ascension Island, St Helena and Tristan da Cunha were detached from the Archdiocese of Cape Town and erected into a Missio sui juris in the pastoral care of the Prefect Apostolic based in Stanley.

DARWIN CHURCH

In response to requests from their Scottish shepherds the Falkland Islands Company Ltd brought out a Presbyterian minister for Darwin and he arrived early in 1872. Services were held in the Cookhouse until a church was built, mostly funded by the Company. When the main settlement was moved to Goose Green the church was re-erected there as the community hall.

THE TABERNACLE UNITED FREE CHURCH

In 1889 the Reverend George Henry Harris purchased the site in Barrack Street for a Baptist Tabernacle for £40 and called for subscriptions. In 1892 a corrugated iron kit building was erected and remains to date largely as originally constructed with the exception of the belfry which was removed in the 1930s.

BIRTHS, BAPTISMS, MARRIAGES, DEATHS AND BURIALS:

The earliest registers held in the Archives are civil registers, both from the fledgling colony at Port Louis, with the earliest entries from 1838 signed by Robert Lowcay, the naval officer in charge. Although the first Colonial Chaplain, the Reverend James Leith Moody, did not arrive in the Falkland Islands until October 1845 the registers of the Parish of Holy Trinity started earlier as he copied the entries from the civil registers into them.

Index to Registers.pdf4.36 MB

Register of Baptisms solemnized in the Parish of Christ Church - 1892 to 1916.pdf(12.76 MB )

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While every effort has been taken to ensure accuracy the Jane Cameron National Archives does not accept responsibility for any omissions or errors in these records.

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