On the weekend we visited Minister’s Island near St. Andrews. As I looked through the windows of the restored main house, I saw more than peaceful vistas.

These were the fields I had roamed many times as a child on family excursions. No admission fee then, you just checked the tide before driving across the bar and made sure to be back on the mainland again before it was under water. If the season was  right, we dug clams on the way home.

I had always known it as Minister’s Island or Van Horne’s Island and figured Van Horne must have been a cabinet minister. I was wrong; it was named for Rev. Samuel Andrews.

In 1790 Rev. Andrews built his house on the island he had purchased for £ 250 pound sterling—thereafter known as Minister’s Island.

I had never been in the Van Horne home, now restored beyond anything my child’s mind could have imagined.

        

But there was one thing that was exactly as I remembered it, except for the fence and a mowed path.  The Bath House still stands solid by the shore.

With its domed interior showcasing the view.

 

 

 

 

 

I descended the spiral staircase to the bathing pool and to look back at the Bath House.

 

 

 

 

 

And the tide still waits for no man so we crossed the bar before it once again became the ocean’s floor.