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All Saints Church Beaconsfield
Kimberley, Northern Cape

Date:1886
Type:Church
Status:Extant

An Anglican Church in the Beaconsfield suburb.

"The early church edifices on the dry diggings were most miserable structures of wood and canvas. A building of that material was erected on a site situated at the lower side of Du Toits Pan Market Square. It was a long building of about sixty feet, and about twenty feet wide; the wall-plates were seven feet above the level of the floor; the ridge-pole, or beam, of the pitch roofing, about twelve feet from the floor." (John Angove). The interior was fitted with an altar and a reading desk; sitting accommodation was for about one hundred or one hundred and fifty.

The canvas walls and roof of the church were at last covered with galvanized-iron, which, with a boarded floor, made it far more comfortable. On the 23rd of May 1886, the foundation stone of the new Parish Church of All Saints was laid in the New Township, now Beaconsfield.

Due to the Group Areas Act, the church was closed and deconsecrated in the 1960s, and a new parish was established in Homevale. Today, the Beaconsfield building is used by a breakaway group called the 'Traditional Anglican Church', which is not part of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.

Source: kimberley.org.za