The earliest burying grounds in Flamborough were often located on farm properties due to the distance from an established cemetery in the area. The records of burials at such sites are now lost as properties changed hands and families left the area.

Abandoned cemeteries created by early church congregations also lack such records and are often unknown to local residents when almost all the signs, such as buildings and monuments, have since disappeared from sight, such an abandoned cemetery exists on the outskirts of Carlisle village.

Located on Lot 6, Concession 8 of the former township of East Flamborough, the pioneer Methodist and Anglican cemetery can only be accessed from Carlisle Road. The original deed to the cemetery property dates from Nov. 5, 1858, when the trustees of the Chapel of the Canadian Wesleyan New Connexion Church purchased a quarter of an acre from Andrew Patton for £12.10s. A chapel or meeting house was built at the front of the property, reputedly a white frame structure with a small steeple. At the rear of the building stood a drive shed and an area that served as a cemetery.

The small congregation was one of a number of denominations or branches within the Methodist Church that existed from the 1840s to 1870s, mainly as a result of minor differences over doctrine. As the various sects of the church were reunited during the 1870s, the Carlisle chapel became redundant; the Wesleyan Methodist Church on Centre Road absorbed them again to become the only Methodist Church in the central area of the township.

The trustees of the Chapel of the Canadian Wesleyan New Connexion Methodist Church advertised the building for sale in the Canadian Champion, a Milton newspaper, in October and the first week of November, 1870. When no buyers came forward, the property and building went to a public auction conducted outside the church door on Nov. 7, 1870. The only bid appears to have been made by members of the small Anglican community in the Carlisle area who had no building in which to worship so travelled to Waterdown for services. The members, in the name of the Toronto Diocese of the Anglican Church, paid $350 for the buildings and burial ground and immediately renamed the chapel St. Paul’s Anglican Church.

Sylvia Wray is the former archivist with the Flamborough Archives. She can be reached through the Archives at archives@flamboroughhistory.com.

This article was originally published in the Flamborough Review, 13 May 2015.