St. Peter's Anglican Church - Plettenberg Bay

Welcome to St Peter’s Anglican Church

St. Peter’s Anglican Church was built in Plettenberg Bay between 1878 and 1881. The plans had been drawn up in 1850 by Sophia Gray, wife of Bishop Robert Gray. Robert Gray had been appointed by the Colonial Bishoprics Council to serve as the first bishop of the Church of England in the Cape of Good Hope and Natal and arrived in Africa with his wife in February 1848. Part of the Bishop’s objective was to increase the number of Anglican ministers serving the English communities in the colonies; and in the period between 1848 and 1872, he founded forty churches for this purpose.

In April 1848, William Newdigate (a wealthy Englishman who owned a farm in the area of Plettenberg Bay) and Thomas Duthie (of Belvidere) travelled to Cape Town to meet with Robert Gray to impress upon him the need for churches in the area. Two years later the Bishop recorded that ‘as the funds for the erection of a stone church are not sufficient, Mr. Newdigate is building at his own cost, a wooden church which will serve for a few years” In 1872, following the death of his wife, Gray visited the area and reported that the wooden chapel was “out of the perpendicular” and that “a plan of a church given some time ago by my dearest wife was produced and it was resolved to attempt to carry it out …“ Despite the fact that Bishop Robert Gray passed away before the building of the church began, the founding work of the Bishop and the plans drawn by his wife credit them as major contributors to the eventual building of St Peter’s. The church was used for the first time on Easter Sunday 1881.

Perched on a hillside overlooking the Plettenberg Bay, St Peter’s church is located on a site where one would ordinarily expect to find a hotel or homes reserved for the wealthy. The grandness of this setting seems to enhance the harmony the stone church. Whilst other architecture may respond to the view in grandness and celebration, the church makes no reference to its surrounds. It seems to sit on its site, among the holiday homes which have since been built, going about its duty of being a church — as it did before and as it will continue to do.

Idyllic Wedding Ceremonies

Our Beautiful Church is the perfect venue for the “Idyllic Wedding Ceremony”. Combine a ceremony at St Peter’s with a reception at one of the area’s many wonderful Wedding Venues. Contact us for available dates and counseling requirements.

Counseling

Do you or a loved one need someone to talk to? We are here to help. Please contact us.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. (2 Cor 1)