Today is Canada Day and the 150th anniversary of the enactment
of the British North America Act which united three colonies into a single
country called Canada. Yesterday I thought
it appropriate to cross the county border into Devonshire and visit Wolford
Chapel near Honiton, it being the family chapel and final resting place of John
Graves Simcoe, first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada.
A drive down the A30 took me to Honiton where the signs
point you to Dunkeswell in the beautiful Blackdown Hills. Wolford Chapel is only 3.7 miles from the
A30, but the entrance to the narrow tree-lined track leading to the Chapel is
in a wooded and shady dip in the road – it is easily missed. You have gone too far if you reach
Dunkeswell!
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| Wolford Chapel, near Honiton, in Devonshire. |
The Chapel, being a memorial to Simcoe, was gifted to the
people of the Canadian Province of Ontario by Sir Geoffrey Harmsworth in 1966,
hence the Canadian flag flying in the depths of the Blackdowns.
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| The plaque beside Wolford Chapel noting the gift to the people of Ontario. |
A plaque inside the Chapel states: “Lieut.General John Graves Simcoe 1752-1806. Born in Cotterstock, Northamptonshire, Simcoe
entered the army in 1770, and during the American Revolution commanded the 1st
American Regiment (Queens Rangers). In
1791 he was appointed the first Lieutenant-Governor of the newly-formed
Province of Upper Canada. During his
energetic administration, he improved communications, encouraged immigration
and founded York (Toronto). In 1796 he
returned to Wolford, purchased in 1784, and during 1797 was Governor and
Military Commander in British-occupied St. Domingo (Haiti). He commanded the Western Military District,
1801-1806, when England was threatened with French invasion. Appointed Commander-in-Chief of India in
1806, Simcoe died before taking up that post, and with his wife is buried in
this chapel.”
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| Inside Wolford Chapel the Simcoe family chapel and final resting place of John Graves Simcoe. |
The Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography describes Simcoe as: “. . . an inspiring soldier and brilliant tactician, an affable and
loyal comrade, and a lifelong student of history and writer of verse, but he
was too great a projector, and his ambition outran the uncertain health that
plagued him from early manhood. He was
buried on the 4 November 1806 in the chapel at Wolford Lodge.”*
A Canadian view of Simcoe’s life and career can be found
here:
*J. A.
Houlding, ‘Simcoe, John Graves (1752–1806)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25554, accessed 30 June 2017]
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