Because of the Chapel's location at the water's edge of a high bluff visitors were not wthheld by marchland but free to enter the doors, open to all.
"Come in, old man and say your prayers,
Come ye all, ye of fewer years.....
Come in.... slight not the precious call;
Behold, the doors are open to all."
In 1703 a cypress church was built at the Hill that already was a family or community graveyard. This church, or the one at Goose Creek, was the first Anglican church outside walled Charles Town. Reverent Mr. Samuel Thomas a missionary to the Province wrote in 1705:
"Here is one church already erected by the peculiar direction and religious care of Sir Nathanial Johnson and at the charge of the parish."
The building was designeted by Statute as the official Chapel of Ease to the Parish Chrurch of St. Thomas and St. Denis..
The devout churchmembers started building a brick building in 1763. Zachariah Villepontoux, the brickmaker and William Axson were two of the principal workman of the builing. The bricks came probably from the kilns at Paranassus Plantation on the Black River, where Villepotoux resided. The master mason was William Axson . These two men left their masonry marks in the bricks by the doorpost.
The 930 red tiles that form the cross aisles were paid by Gabriel Manigauld, neighbour plantation owner and merchant from Charles Town. The chancel and the red cedar pulpit are said to have been copied from St. Michael's in Charles Town.
This is a building which, at least until the 1980's , has faithfully kept thev early seating benches painted the original light brown and white and the communian table as used by parishioners and clercgy during these many history filled years.
"On approaching this Chapel from the River-side, the stranger will not fail to notice four lofty pines, peering above all the other trees, lifting their mejestic heads inthe mid-air, like giant sentinels, keeping watch and ward over the church that lays at their feet, with all the humility and confidence, as it were, of a babe, unconcious as yet of its first transgression and feering no danger;
whilst on the right of the Chapel, as he clims the bluff, he will remark a deep and shady grove, spreading its sacred shelter over the graves and tombs of those, who have in His good time gone before their quiet beds, the shadow of the spreading trees."
This was written in 1848 by J B Irving!
Even more today, this place seems to muse and ponder in its silence.. No songs from the fields can be heard today. No plantation villages are left to disturb this stillness of it, all is quiet now. Only the slow creeping rivers worksong can be heard if one has ears for it.
