Old Runnymede Church originally stood in Runnymede, an English village nine and one half miles northeast of Harper. It was first dedicated as St. Patrick's Episcopal Church in 1889, but was rededicated in 1893 when the Episcopalians of Harper purchased the frame building and moved it to its present location at 11th and Pine Streets. Runnymede had been established by an Irish promoter who persuaded wealthy English and Irish families to send their sons to America to study farming. The community flourished for five years, then withered and died for lack of a railroad, leaving a solitary grave in a lonely field and this church to the people of Harper.