A chapel of thatch

More families came, and the faith spread until the cross by Santhaayi's door could no longer hold them all. By 1685 they had built themselves a church, a small thing of thatch. Those were the years the whole Madura mission was in de Britto's charge. Every church that followed it was larger than the last.

DocumentedThis moment rests on 4 sources.

Hardgrave 1969

a church was built in 1685

What this source establishes

Hardgrave, writing his social history from his own sources, states plainly that a church was built at Vadakkankulam in 1685 — the outside basis for this moment. He names neither the builder nor the dedication; those remain the parish’s own account.

This is as much of the book as this site prints. It is named in full in the bibliography below.