St. Aidan's Church
Place Description
St. Aidan’s Anglican Church is a one-storey, front-gabled church distinguished by its square front-projecting entryway with crenellated parapets and a round-arched entry with a wood-panelled door. The church is located on a highly visible lot on Rutland Road, at the corner of Mugford Road, in the Rutland neighbourhood of Kelowna. The site is now owned by the Okanagan Buddhist Cultural Centre.
Heritage Value
St. Aidan’s Anglican Church, built in 1933, is valued as a symbol of the importance of the Anglican Church to the early rural community of Rutland. It also represents the importance of local churches to rural settlements, and the central role they played in community life. The church’s strategic positioning in a highly visible and central location in Rutland is a prominent statement of the importance of the Anglican Church to the early community. Rutland and East Kelowna were established as outstations of St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church in 1912. A meeting was held in the Rutland Community Hall on January 9, 1929, to discuss the building of a church facility. At the time, there was no place for Anglican worship in Rutland other than a small room in the Community Hall. The site for a new church was donated by Mr. and Mrs. Ben Hardie, who owned the local grocery and hardware store. The design was provided by Enoch Mugford (1879-1969), superintendent of the Black Mountain Irrigation District, and prominent local developer and contractor Hector Maranda (1879-1967) led the mostly volunteer building crew. St. Aidan’s Rutland was dedicated on June 18, 1933. In 1938, a chancel and a vestry were added. Of interest is the Norman arch between the chancel and nave, a replica of the entrance to St. Aidan’s first church at Lindisfarne Abbey in Northumberland, England. In 1958, the original porch was moved to the front of the lot for use as a lych gate, to allow the construction of an enclosed front vestibule.
The church is also significant as a demonstration of simple British Arts and Crafts influences, which serves to honour the Diocese’s motherland and illustrates a conscious shift to a traditional style reflective of the social and economic consciousness of the interwar period. At the time, buildings were expected to display some sort of historical reference in order to demonstrate good taste and underlying conservatism. The British Arts and Crafts influence is demonstrated in the steeply pitched, overhanging roof with exposed rafters and the use of roughcast stucco.
Character Defining Elements
Key elements that define the heritage character of the St. Aidan’s Anglican Church include its:
- Prominent location at the corner of Rutland and Mugford Roads in the Rutland neighbourhood
- Ecclesiastical form, scale and massing as expressed by its: rectangular plan; one-storey height; and front-gabled roof with gabled projection at side of church
- Post and beam frame construction and rock-dash stucco cladding
- Features of the British Arts and Craft style including: steeply pitched roofline with exposed rafter tails; decorated bargeboards, curved upper window openings; and entryway with curved doorway and crenellated parapet
- Exterior features such as internal chimney clad in stucco
- Original window openings, with inset Gothic pointed-arch multi-paned wooden-sash windows
- Round-arched, vertically-panelled wooden front door with original hardware
- Interior features such as fir floors and baseboards, lath-and-plaster walls, barrel-vaulted ceiling and arched entry to chancel
- Associated landscape features such as a mature deciduous tree at front of property, a portion of the original coursed rock perimeter wall, and the original porch now used as a lych gate
