Across the border from Vermont, a medieval showpiece

May 03, 2009|Diane E. Foulds, Globe Correspondent

SUTTON, Quebec - The road runs parallel to the Vermont border, dipping and rising along the forested hills. At a scenic elevation, a cluster of haphazardly parked cars frames a pair of iron gates. Beyond is an unlikely sight: a cobblestone path leading to a medieval chapel, the sort you might find in Tuscany or Provence. New France's earliest explorers might have built 17th-century structures, but a 13th-century chapel?

A guided tour supplies the answers. The stone-walled building is the creation of a Czech-born antiques dealer, Henrietta Antony. At 77, she radiates energy, welcoming groups in English or French. She acquired the 450 acres piecemeal, she explains, starting in 1959, and slowly transformed them into this Moravian paradise. Her yellow stucco home with its Baroque-style facade, built in 1989, was just the beginning.

Antony went on to create the chapel, a caretaker's house, and a whimsical garden with a grass-roofed "hobbit house," the sort of place Moravian monks might have inhabited in the Middle Ages. In 2000 she completed the vineyard, carving the hillside into a terraced showpiece. Its 7,000 vines now produce a dry white table wine and a prize-winning ice wine made from frozen grapes. Though not the only winery in southern Quebec - the region has at least 18 - for sheer romance, Chapelle St. Agnes is in a class of its own.

On a summer afternoon, Antony guides visitors into the chapel. It is an intimate, musty-smelling place, with close-set pews, mosaic floors, and statues missing arms and noses. After World War II, life was quiet in southern Quebec, she tells us, but there was plenty of wood, and for many, carving became a pastime for the winter months. Some masterful work was produced, but with the advent of television, local woodcarving skills began to die out. Saddened at the loss, she started to collect carvings.

Antony had immigrated to Canada in 1949 and settled in Montreal, where she married, started a family, and launched a business repairing antiques. Every spare cent went to artifacts, including Quebec carvings. Many are displayed in the chapel, alongside European religious artifacts acquired over the years. The lectern dates from the 17th century, the stained-glass windows are early 18th-century German, and the late Gothic statue of St. John the Baptist originated in Bohemia.