St. Mary’s Chapel has stood close to Ellis Pond in Roxbury since residents constructed it about 1950. It hasn’t been used for normal spiritual providers in a decade and its destiny is unsure. Steve Collins/Solar Journal
ROXBURY — With its peeling white paint, barely saggy flooring and weed-strewn lot, the outdated chapel that stands throughout from a Major Avenue data kiosk about conservation efforts at Ellis Pond has clearly seen higher days since summertime residents banded collectively to construct it nearly 75 years in the past.
For many years, it supplied summertime providers to the largely Franco American neighborhood that camped alongside the pond’s shores. It doubled as a gathering corridor for the Silver Lake Camp Homeowners’ Affiliation that watchdogs the 920-acre pond.
Now, although, the destiny of the constructing and the lot it sits on is up within the air.
Residents fear the property’s proprietor, the Portland diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, plans to promote it, no strings hooked up, regardless of their pleas to discover a means to make sure it stays the centerpiece of their longstanding neighborhood.
“We are able to’t work out what’s happening. They received’t meet with us,” mentioned Matt Towle, a longtime resident energetic with the affiliation.
For some, saving the constructing is vital for the neighborhood.
“It’s the one place the place we will collect proper by the pond,” mentioned Steve Griffin, who’s energetic within the camp house owners affiliation.
The pond, which is typically referred to as Roxbury Pond or Silver Lake, is nestled within the hills between the Andover Earth Station in rural Oxford County and the Swift River.
Ellis Pond residents Steve Griffin, left, and Matt Towle try to protect St. Mary’s Chapel for neighborhood use in Roxbury. Steve Collins/Solar Journal
It’s the sort of place, Towle mentioned, the place a real neighborhood can, and has, developed over the course of a long time, with many households coming for generations, and a few staying year-round.
“You will have folks that may respect your privateness and on the identical time be there once you want them,” Towle mentioned.
Griffin mentioned persons are good to at least one one other and that somebody is extra more likely to be hit by a kayak out on the water than a speedboat.
“It’s not like a Sebago setting,” Towle mentioned.
BUILDING A CHAPEL
Residents started gathering cash through the Forties to erect a chapel and acquired collectively to construct it, ending the work in about 1950. They enlarged what was then referred to as the Silver Lake Chapel just a few years later.
A information report from the time mentioned “campers and camp house owners of all faiths” contributed money and time to the challenge.
It’s not an elaborate place, simply picket planks on concrete footings, with a bit bell tower. But it surely’s nonetheless sufficiently big to carry greater than 100 folks with ease.
The preliminary proprietor of the constructing, the Silver Lake Chapel Affiliation, determined in 1955, by a vote of 23-3, to offer the chapel to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, which might administer it by means of St. Theresa’s Parish in Mexico.
The native priest, the Rev. George Cyr, invited the bishop, Daniel Feeney, to return and bless the brand new chapel in a giant ceremony held in August 1956. Cyr mentioned in a written remembrance that as a result of the blessing was carried out on the feast of the Assumption, the church opted to call it St. Mary’s Chapel.
A COMMUNITY CENTERPIECE
For a few years, the chapel supplied summertime spiritual providers that drew giant crowds.
Towle mentioned he remembered an older fellow who used to sit down on the porch out entrance gathering “seat cash” to assist pay for brand spanking new pews bought within the Nineteen Sixties. Most of them nonetheless have little plaques on them honoring the donor who paid for them.
As not too long ago as a decade in the past, the Rev. Raymond “Moots” Carignan used to carry day by day providers on the chapel beside the lake the place he spent his summers for a few years. However when Carignan died in 2013, the providers apparently ceased.
St. Mary’s Chapel in Roxbury, a small Roman Catholic church, has not seen a lot use in years. Steve Collins/Solar Journal
Again in 2010, the Silver Lake Camp Homeowners’ Affiliation wrote to a bishop in Portland to ask in regards to the constructing’s availability.
“It was by means of the labor of our grandparents and oldsters that the chapel was constructed,” wrote Angie Arsenault, the president of the affiliation on the time. “For sure, we really feel very strongly hooked up to the chapel.”
“We’re involved about any future change in possession of the chapel,” Arsenault wrote.
She instructed or not it’s saved as a nonprofit pond neighborhood useful resource that may “benefit from the help and care of the full-time and seasonal residents within the space.”
“We’re undoubtedly against any industrial growth or personal possession of the power,” she mentioned.
Different letters adopted.
One among them, from James Wendt, a brand new president of the affiliation, requested the constructing and property be returned to the neighborhood.
“I imagine this to be probably the most Christian means for the church to relinquish possession of the property,” he wrote, asking for not less than the correct of first refusal if it does wind up being offered.
The affiliation goals to make use of the buildings for its conferences and actions.
NO WORD FROM THE DIOCESE
Church officers have been notably cautious of claiming a lot to the neighborhood. In addition they didn’t reply to requests for touch upon this story.
The entrance door of St. Mary’s Chapel in Roxbury can nonetheless open to the neighborhood every now and then, however the constructing is never used any longer. The Silver Lake Chapel Affiliation voted in 1955 to offer it to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland. Steve Collins/Solar Journal
In 2014, the Rev. Greg Dube in Rumford mentioned in an electronic mail to an affiliation member that he didn’t know what the chapel’s future use could be.
“It’s one thing that must be addressed,” Dube wrote to Sally Arsenault.
Lake affiliation members mentioned they’ve heard, nonetheless, that the church is clearing the best way for the constructing’s sale, together with monitoring down descendants of somebody who donated a part of the land to get their permission.
Towle mentioned Friday, although, it doesn’t look like available on the market.
He mentioned efforts to satisfy with church actual property officers have gotten nowhere.
“Our requests are falling on deaf ears,” Towle mentioned.
For Griffin, who has spent 75 years by the pond after his father constructed a camp in 1941, the chapel is a central a part of the neighborhood’s life.
“We’re the heirs to the individuals who constructed that constructing,” Griffin mentioned, and should be those to determine its destiny.
Ellis Pond in Roxbury, often known as Roxbury Pond and Silver Lake. Steve Collins/Solar Journal
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