St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wallingford (1868)

Anglicans in Wallingford are thought to have first formally organized themselves in 1729, later establishing a Union Church with residents of North Haven in 1741. They erected a Church building near Pond Hill which was soon outgrown, as was a later building the parishioners moved to in the 1750s. A new church was built at the corner of North Main and Christian Streets in 1758-1762. At that time, with parishioners from other towns having established their own separate churches, the former Union Church was renamed St. Paul’s. In 1831, St. Paul’s acquired the land and meetinghouse of the Wells Society, a group of Congregationalists who joined with the Episcopalians. The old Episcopal church building of 1762 was moved, eventually being used as a residence. In 1846, a new Gothic-style church was built on the Wells land, but it was destroyed in a fire in 1867. It was replaced the following year by the current brownstone church, designed by George E. Harney of New York. It was built in the Gothic tradition of the English Ecclesiologists, who modeled their designs on English medieval parish churches.