Breadalbane Presbyterian Church

Breadalbane Presbyterian

Church (1898) is a small fieldstone church in the Victorian Gothic style. Once the heart of the Breadalbane

district, together with the school that stood across the road (now demolished), the church remains a

sturdy presence on the open prairie on the south side of the Breadalbane Church Road in the R.M. of Woodworth.

The municipal designation applies to the lot and the buildings on it.

Breadalbane Presbyterian Church is an outstanding and well-preserved example of the

kind of small rural church built in the Establishment period as the railway attracted new pioneers westward,

and a rare surviving example in stone. Its excellent craftsmanship is a testament to the competence of

its largely-Scottish congregation, who built it from local granite fieldstone under the direction of

C.B. Murphy after their original 1889 frame church was destroyed by a tornado. It has a high degree of

interior and exterior physical integrity, and retains its original interior fittings and its doors, hardware,

windows and shutters.

Source: R.M. of Woodworth by-law No. 7-2012, 14 August 2012.

Key

elements that define the site character of Breadalbane Presbyterian Church include:

- its rural setting

within open fields southwest of the community of Lenore

- the placement of the church on its site with

the entrance porch facing west

- the wood frame building at the south-east corner¿a rare surviving example

of a church stable

Key elements that define the exterior heritage character of the church include:

-

the basic rectangular form with a medium-pitched wood-shingled gable roof

- the granite fieldstone walls,

with a mixture of cut and rubble stone laid mostly in courses, particularly at the front and sides; the

stone courses emphasized by thin white lines laid in over the mortar joints; the two bottommost courses

of squared blocks projecting slightly out from the wall to form a low water table; the angled half-height

corner buttresses with three additional half-height buttresses on each side; the stone at the northeast

corner reading ¿Breadalbane Church; AD 1898 C.B. Murphy¿; the lean-to stone porch at the west front,

with entrance doorways at the south and north and a window in the west end

- the fenestration, with pointed

window openings highlighted with stone surrounds and simple gothic-style glazing pattern in clear glass

- the shingled gable ends of the church and the porch, featuring a pattern of alternating rows of curved

fishscale and diamond-tipped shingles, with a sunburst in the upper gables and a wooden ringed cross

at each gable end, with the central circular portion pierced by a quatrefoil

Key elements that define

the interior heritage character of the church include:

- the open space of the nave with white plastered

walls and ceiling, and tongue-and-groove unpainted wood wainscoting around the periphery, extended to

form a pointed arch at the centre of the east end

- the organization of the space, with wooden pews arranged

three abreast with narrow aisles between them

- the raised chancel area with curved front, defined by

a wooden balustrade with turned spindles

- the dark-stained wood floor

- the original Gothic Revival-style

wood windows divided by wood muntins into four rectangular panes, with one upper pane sliding for ventilation,

topped by a gothic arch divided into three panes; the deep window reveals clad in tongue-and-groove panelling;

the sills sloping down towards the floor; the simple wood casings of a design often found in domestic

buildings of the period

- the simple entrance porch with its domestic detailing, its plaster walls and

its unpainted wainscoting