The Beauty of Holiness: Anglicanism and Architecture in Colonial South Carolina

2. The Diversity of Countries, Times, and Men’s Manners

Chapter 2 THE DIVERSITY OF COUNTRIES, TIMES, AND MEN’S MANNERS Sheltered in long stretches by a canopy of live oak trees and Spanish moss, U.S. Highway 61 follows an ancient path northwest from Charleston toward the rice plantations that once lined the Ashley River. About twelve miles out from the city, the church of St. Andrew’s Parish stands on a slight rise (FIG. 2.1). Begun as a simple rectangle in 1706 and expanded in 1723 to a cruciform plan, St. Andrew’s contains the oldest building fabric of any church in South Carolina. White-painted stucco covers the brick walls, rusticated quoins mark their corners, and arched windows light the interior. Double doors, arched like the windows, open at the ends of the northern, southern, and western wings, each beneath a small circular window. Inside, rows of boxed pews and a raised pulpit at the crossing approximate eighteenth-century forms, while the marble basin of the eighteenth-century baptismal font rests on an elaborate nineteenth-century cast-iron stand (FIG. 2.2). Tall, arched tablets carrying sacred texts dominate the eastern chancel, and a vaulted ceiling rises over the entire interior. Fundamentally different from its urban counterparts in Charleston, the rural parish church of St. Andrew’s shows little FIGURE 2.1 Southern elevation of St. Andrew’s Church, Charleston County, begun 1706 and expanded 1723 (Photo by author) CONSTRUCTING MATERIAL RELIGION 58 concern for contemporary design practice in London. But it also differed in significant ways from other rural parish churches in the South Carolina. The variation of architectural form among early parish churches like St. Andrew’s demonstrates the extent to which designers and builders experimented with diverse English church-building traditions as they gradually shaped a local tradition of Anglican church architecture in South Carolina over the course of the eighteenth century. Just outside the walls of St. Andrew’s lies another fairly early remnant of Anglican material culture, the 1721 chest tomb of Elizabeth Nairn (FIG. 2.3). The ledger stone is richly ornamented with the Nairn family crest, and the epitaph below identifies her two husbands and the children she bore by each, offering detailed information about the military and political feats of the men in her family and absolutely no commentary specific to Elizabeth. Measuring six and a half feet by three and a half feet and a full four inches thick, the marble slab was probably ordered from London. In many ways, this marker is typical of those erected to the memory of elite Anglicans in the early eighteenth century, not only across South Carolina but also across the British Empire; similar early eighteenth-century markers can be found in Virginia, the Caribbean, and England. But over the course of the eighteenth century, South Carolina’s Anglican churchyards would take on a specifically regional character, as markers began to identify the graves of those below the most elite classes and the colony’s Anglicans began to turn to New England gravestone carvers and eventually to local providers in addition to London sources. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the material culture of Anglicanism in South Carolina had taken on a very specific local character. This chapter will introduce first the broad regional patterns in architecture, then the grave markers, and finally Communion silver. FIGURE 2.2 Interior of St. Andrew’s Church, Charleston County, begun 1706 and expanded 1723 (Photo by author) The importance of local preference in Anglicanism was officially articulated as early as the sixteenth century: “It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly alike, for at all times they have been diverse, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners.”¹ By including these words in the 1571 foundational document “The 39 Articles,” the fathers of the Anglican Church understood that the local church took a multitude of forms as it was realized in a multitude of local circumstances. The colonial practice of locating design responsibility with church commissioners in each parish generated a diversity of forms among churches in early colonial South Carolina. The churches erected between 1706 and the 1740s took one of three different forms (see appendix 1). The majority were longitudinal in plan, meaning that they had a fairly narrow width that accommodated a single aisle flanked by rows of pews against the building’s longer...