St. Luke's Church (Smithfield, Virginia)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Saint Luke's Church (Smithfield) | |
|---|---|
| (U.S. National Historic Landmark) | |
 |
|
| Location: | Isle of Wight County, Virginia |
| Nearest city: | Smithfield, Virginia |
| Coordinates: | Coordinates: |
| Built/Founded: | 1632 (estimated) |
| Architect: | Unknown |
| Architectural style(s): | Gothic |
| Added to NRHP: | October 15, 1966 |
| NRHP Reference#: | 66000838 [1] |
| Governing body: | Historic St. Luke's Restoration, Inc. |
- See also: Oldest buildings in America
St. Luke's Church, also known as Benns Church, Old Brick Church, or Newport Parish Church is an historic church located in the unincorporated community of Benns Church, near Smithfield in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, and has been known variously as the Old Brick Church or the Newport Parish Church long before it was given its present name in 1820. It is the oldest existing church of English foundation in America and the nation's only surviving Gothic building. St. Luke's Church is estimated to date to 1632. On October 15, 1966, St. Luke's was designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its historic and architectural distinction.
Contents |
[edit] Architecture
The English Gothic, as opposed to Gothic Revival, architecture of the church is seen in the prominent square tower, lancet-arched windows, wall buttresses, and tracery end window. Basically, Saint Luke's is a simple nave plan (29'4 and 3/4" X 65'7 3/4") with a twenty foot square tower at the west end. Its two-foot-thick walls are laid in a rough Flemish bond, including crude tracery in brick, forming pointed lancet-arch windows. The large lancet-arched east wall is a striking exercise in brick tracery. Deep wall buttresses project prominently from three bays of the north and south walls. They have sloping set-offs. At both the east and west end of the church are crow-stepped gables, while unadorned turrets, corbeiled slightly at their bases, decorate the corners of the building.
The interior appointments of Saint Luke's were not added until a number of years after completion of the fabric of the building, and after 1657 Colonel Joseph Bridger commissioned Charles and Thomas Driver to complete the work and add the third story to the tower. The roof has been rebuilt a number of times and doubtless originally had a steeper, more Gothic, pitch. The tie-beam timber-truss, closed above the collar beam, has also been rebuilt but is based upon the original scheme as verified by research.
Originally, a gallery, or balcony, existed at the west end of the nave, supported by a massive hewn oak beam, and this has been rebuilt, as has been the rood screen in the chancel, or apse, and the square brick tiles in the floor of the church. The original stained-glass windows were replaced in the nineteenth century and those Victorian windows remain in place today.
[edit] Dating Controversy
The dating of this church with Gothic elements is a matter of disagreement between local traditions and academic researchers. Local sources insist that the church can be dated to 1632.
The basic argument for 1632 is:
- The vestry records were concealed by burial during the Revolutionary War by Colonel Josiah Parker and read by his daughter, a Mrs. Cowper and other reliable witnesses who assert a brick church was built in 1632. Upon reading, the records were used as wadding for muskets during the war of 1812[2] or crumpled into dust[3][4]
- Local tradition links the name of a militia Colonel Joseph Bridger who is interred in the chancel of the church to the construction of the church[5]
- A set of dating bricks, discovered in a roof collapse in 1887,[5] or 1886,[6] bears the date 1632.
- Architectural elements such as buttresses, crow step gables, and the principal rafter roof were characteristic of early 17th century churches.[7]
Other evidence calls into doubt the verisimilitude of these assertions:
- It was common for several churches to be built on the same site generations apart. The presence of a brick church on this site does not mean that it was this brick church[5][7]
- Joseph Bridger was born in 1628 and was four years old in 1632. Some sources cite clumsy efforts to link Bridger’s father with the site, but his name was Samuel, and he can not be documented as having come to America[8][9]
- The bricks have indeterminate numerals that can be read as 1632 or 1682, and the style of numerals does not match colonial scripts. The bricks also have a mortar coating indicating that they may have been re-used as interior bricks in later repairs, alterations, or new construction. The best case scenario is the bricks were part of an earlier church at the same site and were used as interior bricks in the 1680 church. According to Upton, the bricks are clearly forgeries.[7]
- Two other local figures, Charles and Thomas Driver, are also associated with the church, but they, like Colonel Bridger, are associated with records in the later 17th century when they were adults. There are two bricks in the third story of the tower bearing the initials CD and TD usually associated with these two men[5]
- The architectural features of the building can all be documented in English churches of the later 17th century or much later time periods.[10]
General historical data militate against the establishment of such an elaborate edifice in 1632 and generally agree with a date in the 1680s:
- The other Virginia buildings with gothic features were all constructed in the late 17th century or after:
- Bacon’s Castle 1665;
- Jamestown Church circa 1676 not 1639-1647;[11]
- 2nd Bruton Parish Church 1681-3;
- St. Peter’s Parish Church 1701;
- Yeocomico 1706.[12]
It is unlikely that one of these stylistically related buildings predates the others so significantly.
- The association of Joseph Bridger with the church agrees with a date in the 1680s as do the local links to the Driver brothers (Rawlings 8; Upton 60).
- Funding for the Jamestown Church of 1639 was such a problem that it took until 1647 to complete the church. Could a more eleborate church been constructed in sparsely populated Isle of Wight in 1632?[5][7]
- A compromise theory that the church was begun in the 1630s and then modified fifty years later, resulting in the current edifice is also posited.[5]
Mason, Rawlings, and Upton all agree that 1632 is far too early a date for this edifice:
- Mason states, “Since . . . [All evidence] . . . point[s] to a later date than the traditional one, . . . it seems probable that the Old Brick Church was completed by Charles and Thomas Driver, as master workmen, under the direction of Colonel Joseph Bridger, about 1682, and that it succeeded an earlier brick church built on the same site, about 1632 . . . “.[13]
- Rawlings says, “Suffice it to say here that is seems hazardous to claim any date before 1665 and wiser to accept 1682 as the most likely year for its erection, as probably a second church on the same site.”[14]
- And Upton asserts, “St Luke’s similarities to [the previously cited buildings] . . . suggests [sic] a date in the fourth quarter of the seventeenth century for the Isle of Wight county building. . . . [in ] the years around 1680 . . . when a rectangular building based on the room churches, developed in rural England early in the same century, became the characteristic form of the Virginia vernacular church.”[15]
[edit] Current use
Historic St. Luke's is controlled by Historic St. Luke's Restoration, Inc. The Bishop of Southern Virginia, the Rt. Rev. David C. Bane, Jr., was chairman of the board and the Rev. Gary J.M. Barker, rector of Christ Episcopal Church, Smithfield, is the vicar. Christ Church is St. Luke's successor as the Parish Church of Newport Parish.
[edit] Current condition
As of 2002, the National Park Service (NPS) has declared St. Luke's condition to be threatened because of a townhouse development then being built on the southern boundary of the property. Because there are graves within a few feet of the property line, Historic St. Luke's has no practical means of buffering itself from the new development, short of asking for governmental condemnation of the townhouse project. Another threat listed by the NPS is from the lowering ground water level due to various environmental factors. This had already led to some "small vertical cracking" in the church walls.[16]
[edit] See also
- List of National Historic Landmarks in Virginia
- List of Registered Historic Places in Virginia, Counties H-M
- Oldest buildings in America
[edit] Resources
- van Derpool, James Grote (March 1958). "The Restoration of St. Luke's, Smithfield, Virginia". The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 17 (1): 12–18. doi:.
- Foreman, Henry C. (1957). Virginia Architecture in the Seventeenth Century.
- Morrison, Hugh (1952). Early American Architecture.
- Pierson, William H. (1970). American Buildings and their Architects: The Colonial Period.
- Rines, Edward F. (1936). Old Historic Churches of America.
- Meade, William (1995). Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia.. Philadelphia: Genealogical Publishing Co, Inc, 1847.
- Mason, George C. (1945). Colonial Churches of Tidewater Virginia. Richmond, Virginia: Whittet and Shepperson.
- Rawlings, James S. (1963). Virginia’s Colonial Churches: An Architectural Guide. Richmond, Virginia: Garrett and Massie.
- Upton, Dell [1986] (1997). Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
[edit] References
- ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-07-27).
- ^ Meade I p.299.)
- ^ Mason p.193.
- ^ Rawlings p.8.
- ^ a b c d e f Rawlings p.8.
- ^ Meade p.193.
- ^ a b c d Upton p.60.
- ^ Meade p.206ff.
- ^ Mason p.194f.
- ^ Upton pp.63–65.
- ^ Upton p.62
- ^ Dates from Rawlings Table of Contents; Upton pp.61–62.
- ^ Mason p.196.
- ^ Rawlings p.31.
- ^ Upton pp.64–65.
- ^ National Landmark page for St. Luke's
[edit] External links
- Historic St. Luke's website
- National Historic Landmarks page on St. Luke's
- National Register listing for St. Lukes
- Library of Congress materials on St. Luke's
- Archiplanet page on St. Luke's
- St. Luke's churchyard tombstone inscriptions 19th & 20th centuries
- Old Brick Church - proof of 1632 construction
- Christ Episcopal Church, Smithfield
|
||||||||||
