Church ruins in South Carolina

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Begun in 1859 and completed in 1876, Prince Frederick's Chapel played a vital role in the religious life of the Pee Dee settlers in the latter half of the 19^th Century. The ruins of the chapel are all that remain of what once was a striking example of Gothic revival architecture in South Carolina.

Prince Frederick's parish is one of the oldest Protestant Episcopal parishes in South Carolina. It was established in 1734 out of a portion of the already existing Prince George's parish. Named in honor of Frederick, Prince of Wales and son of George II, the parish acquired the old St. George's church located about 15 miles northwest of Georgetown on the Black River. St. George's church was left without a congregation or a rector after 1810, when the cultivation of indigo was abandoned for the more profitable rice farming on the lower banks of the Pee Dee River. The influx of rice planters along the Pee Dee River in the early part of the 19^th Century created a need for a chapel and this need was filled in 1859 by the construction of Prince Frederick's.

While only the steeple tower and front facade remain, the existing structure reflects the simplicity of design and excellent proportions which characterized the whole. Although the buttresses and pinnacles place it in the mainstream of the Gothic revival, the rounded arches, purity of design, and understated decorative elements exhibit a feeling for classical forms. Prince Frederick's Chapel therefore blends two 19^th Century architectural interests, the classical and Gothic, into a satisfactory and pleasing design. The style is almost identical to the masonry church illustrated in Plate 77 of Samuel Sloan's The Modern Architect (Philadelphia, 1852 and 1860), and it is likely that Barbot used this illustration as his prototype.

Building Description

The site of Prince Frederick's Chapel was originally given to the Protestant Episcopal Church in the early 1830s by Reverend Hugh Frazer who had been rector of the Prince Frederick's Church located on the Black River between 1793 and 1810. In 1835, a building committee was established to direct construction of a chapel on Frazer's donated land situated on the Pee Dee River. Consecrated on April 19, 1837, by Bishop Bowen, this chapel was considered inadequate by the mid-1850s and a committee was formed in 1857 to erect a new church. When the cornerstone was laid by the rector, the Reverend Joseph Hunter, on November 17, 1859, ex-Governor R. F. W. Allston gave the commemorative address. Louis J. Barbot was the architect; Philip and Edward Gunn were the contractors.

With the advent of the War Between the States construction was interrupted and the existing structure damaged. In 1876 the building was finally completed. The church was consecrated on March 25, 1877.

With the decline of the rice economy, parishioners migrated to the more densely populated urban areas and the church suffered from lack of maintenance. The only portion of this typical Gothic revival church which remains today is the west facade with the steeple tower. The body of the church, declared unsafe and destroyed in 1966, was originally rectangular in plan and had four narrow arched windows on the side elevations. The existing tower is divided into three sections. On the ground level an arched entranceway once led into the interior of the church. The arch is topped by a rose window on the second story. A double arched window fills most of the space on the third story. Sculptured mouldings, arched dentils, and quatrefoil crosses provide decorative divisions between the stories. The tower terminates in a corbeled gable roof with pinnacles at each corner. The ruined condition clearly reveals the wall construction of rough stucco over brick.

Adjacent to the church grounds is a graveyard which includes numerous examples of 19^th Century grave markers. They are inscribed with the names of local rice planters such as Hayne Allston (d. 1849), Plowden Weston (d. 1870), and William Sparkman a 1891).

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