The story of St. George’s Anglican Church began in 1859, when the Hudson Bay Company’s chaplain, the Reverend W.B. Crickmer, built a church at Derby, three miles west of the present town of Fort Langley and the original site of the Hudson Bay Company’s fort. By 1871, the colony at Derby had dwindled and Reverend Crickmer returned to England. In 1879, the church was moved across the Fraser River to Maple Ridge. This same year, the Diocese of New Westminster was formed under Bishop Sillitoe and the Langley parish came under the charge of the Reverend William Bell, who conducted services in the school house and in the Big House at the Fort.
