I have many childhood memories of Holy Trinity Church in Bailey’s Bay where my sister and I attended Sunday School and Matins. My parents came to Bermuda in 1928 from Conwy in Wales. Having grown up during the last of the great Methodist Revivals in that country, on arriving here they sought out a non-conformist church, settling for the lone Church of Scotland, Christ Church, Warwick.
When I was just six my mother died, leaving my father to raise my sister Anne and me. We moved to Quarry Cottage near Holy Trinity Anglican Church, where my mother was buried. My father wanted my sister and I to attend church with him. There were strong personalities in the the small congregation, like Charles Tucker Outerbridge and H. T. North, tall, lean men who sat bolt upright at the front of the Church in their family pews.
There were impressive priests, too, like the Rev Ball, who was made a Canon. Needless to say, his new title, Canon Ball, was a source of great amusement to my sister and me. When Rev. Leslie Gunner was appointed to succeed Canon Ball at Holy Trinity, our congregation was left to wonder if this was just an amusing coincidence or a case of Divine humour?
Rev. Gunner was a very big, raw-boned man, who, when standing in the pulpit preaching, looked positively enormous and quite terrifying. When he spoke, everyone listened! He single-handedly did away with the shameful racist practice which existed at Holy Trinity and, I expect, other Anglican Churches then, which relegated black members of the congregation to the back of the Church.
The singing at Holy Trinity was led by a small choir which included members who were institutions in their own right, like “Mrs Percy” (Outerbridge), Doris Hollis and Marjorie Davis, and the Somner “girls”, Miss Tina and Miss Gertie, already well into their seventies when I was ten, but destined to sing on in the choir for almost twenty more years! My father, sister and I all sang in this choir at various times over the years.