Here at Manotick United Church we are blessed to have a beautiful heritage building at the centre of the village. You may be interested to learn a little of its history.
1845: A Methodist church in the form of a small log building is established at Long Island Locks and this serves the rapidly growing settlement of Methodists in the area.
1877: Most of the Methodists have moved into the area around Manotick Mill and a new church is built on the corner of Catherine and Elizabeth Streets (now Currier and Dickinson) with time and materials donated by the congregation.
1902: The church building and all records are destroyed by a grass fire. Two days after the fire it is agreed to rebuild the church. In the meantime, the congregation meets in the old Harmony Hall.
1904: Two members of the congregation agree to purchase and donate the present site, a lot known as "the orchard" and the new church (our present building) is constructed on this site and opened on May 22, 1904.
1925: The United Church of Canada is founded as a merger of four Protestant denominatiuons and the Methodist church becomes Manotick United Church.
1956: The church hall is added as an extension to the back of the original church building.
The style and quality of the construction make it a good example of its type, reflected in such features as the offset tower, with open belfry and metal roofing, the use of hammer-dressed masonry, with ashlar quoins and dressings and the colourful windows. Most of the stone came from the quarry at Limebank. The design is much like Trinity United Church in Kars, built a few years earlier. All the windows are beautifully coloured and daintily decorated; because the church is stone, they all have deep window sills. There are seven stained glass windows: the large altar window, two on each side of the main body of the church, and one in each entrance stairway at the front corners.
A visible anchor for the streetscape of Manotick, the church also holds pride of place in the community’s social landscape. The building has been at the center of social activity in Manotick for over a century. It happily opens its door to many different community groups for all kinds of events and activities, from exercise classes, to weekly euchre, to Art Shows, PROBUS meetings and the Manotick Horticultural Society, to name just a few. Thanks to its fantastic acoustics, the church is also a favourite venue for a wide range of concerts.
