This is one of my favorite sites in Charleston... the cemetery reads more like a garden with vines, flowers, and palmetto trees dripping over the marble tomb stones...
This church was organized in 1772 and this building was dedicated in 1787. It was enlarged and remodeled in 1852 in a high Gothic Revival style. The building was badly damaged in the Charleston earthquake of 1886. The exterior was stripped of most of its elaborate decoration, while the interior was restored to its original 1852 appearance.
My favorite details are the metal flags on top of each of the four spires... if they ever go missing, it'll be because I've found away to climb atop the church and dislodge them.
The interior following the earthquake of 1886...
The interior in the 1970s...
The elaborate Gothic vaults and ceiling bosses are especially fantastic and are said to have been based on the ceiling of the Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey constructed by Henry VII...
Hello William:
ReplyDeleteWe know that we should love to visit this church. The graveyard looks so wonderfully overgrown, the headstones almost consumed by the amazingly lush and verdant foliage.
And the ceiling!! What a wedding cake of plaster work. Absolutely magnificent and, as you show, remarkably similar to that at Westminster Abbey.