Old Brick Church (Bacon's Castle, Virginia)

Old Brick Church (Lower Church, Southwark Parish) variously known as the Lawnes Creek Parish Church or the Lower Surry Church is a historic church in Bacon's Castle, Virginia. The lower chapel of the Southwark Parish was a brick rectangular room church built in 1754 about a mile northwest of Bacon's Castle, in Surry County, Virginia. Its brick walls are irregularly laid in Flemish bond and English bond with a few glazed headers. The church remained abandoned from the Disestablishment of the Church of England in America until 1847. It was destroyed by a fire, reputedly set by recently freed slaves following the American Civil War in 1868, but its thick brick walls remained standing. Its ruins were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. The Old Brick Church was typical of the Virginia vernacular churches of the colonial period. Prior to its destruction it probably resembled other surviving 18th century brick rectangular room churches in Virginia such as the circa-1743 Merchant's Hope Church in Prince George County and the Ware Parish Church in Gloucester. Its walls were fairly well preserved until 2003, when a large oak tree in the churchyard was uprooted by high winds during Hurricane Isabel and fell on the ruins of the church, collapsing large portions of its walls. The ruins have since been stabilized, and many of the original bricks were saved. There ar

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).