TOPSAIL UNITED CHURCH "The Church By the Side of the Road" UPPER GULLIES CEMETERY

Upper Gullies United Church Cemetery

It is inevitable that a congregation, with 174 years of history behind it, will eventually run out of space in its churchyard cemetery. Right now in our cemetery we have nearly exhausted the second last row of burial plots in the lower part of the property, leaving just one row in the center section, below the cross marking the site of the old church. In addition to this, there are also still a number of cremation sites in the area adjacent to the church. The upper older portion of the cemetery has some unmarked areas but our research has shown us that it is actually unmarked graves. We have a second cemetery in Long Pond which also contains a significant number of unmarked graves and is thus unavailable for future use.

Successive Boards over the last few years have recognized the problem and beginning about three years ago a process was started to actively find a solution. The preferred choice, of course, was expansion of the present cemetery. This, obviously, would have involved acquiring a portion of the adjacent privately owned land. This was investigated but found to be not an option. That left us with the only other available choice, which was to begin using our third cemetery which is located in Upper Gullies. Many in our congregation have probably never seen this cemetery, or may not even have known it existed. The land actually came into possession of the Methodist Church (later the United Church) in 1886 but contains just a few graves, the earliest dating back to 1895. It was also the site of the United Church in Upper Gullies - a building which we understand was taken down in 1943. We have now erected a cross similar to the one here in Topsail as a permanent marker on the site of that old church. In recognition of the history of the place, the Town of CBS designated it a Town Heritage Site in 2007.

Over the past two years the Board has commissioned major work on the property to turn it into the beautiful site which it is today. It began with the construction of a road and the filling in of areas where needed. This was followed by fencing and landscaping and getting the necessary approvals for the reuse of the land. There are still minor things to be done such as increasing the parking area in front and a bit of painting, but the cemetery is finally ready for use and is now an option for burials even as we continue to use Topsail. Members of our congregation can visit the site to view it for themselves. It is located exactly 1.6 km. past the lights on Legion Road on the ocean side of the Conception Bay Highway. The pictures posted show the cemetery, as well as the old Upper Gullies United Church.

It is well recognized that Upper Gullies is not an ideal solution to our cemetery problem given the disadvantages of having a burial ground that is located so far from our church and the close attachment that so many members of our congregation have to our present cemetery. In spite of this we are forced to face the fact, as have so many other congregations, that a churchyard cemetery is no longer possible and we therefore have to accept the reality, however painful, that in our increasingly urbanized community, difficult changes have to occur if we are to secure the future needs of our congregation.