Ware Church
Miss Nina Sanders (1868-1958) wrote this brief essay on Ware Episcopal Church, Gloucester, Virginia, in the 1950s for the 300th anniversary of the parish.
Bishop Meade in his "Old Churches and Families of Virginia" has this to say: "The history of the Episcopal Church in Virginia has been from the beginning a most interesting and eventful one, beyond that of any other Diocese in the Union", all which we can well believe for that has been the case right here in Gloucester.
Through many visissitudes -- under the various crowned heads of England, and under Cromwell when all the Bishops in Virginia were ordered out of their Diocese -- the Church began to see daylight when the Virginia Assembly, in 1649 allowed its County Courts to erect Parishes. We can believe that by 1650 a Parish had been laid off for Ware Church near Ware River, on what was known as the "Glebe", where Services must have been held for many years before that, as there is on record that "a Church, and perhaps more than one" had been erected on the South side of the Piankitank [River] as early as 1630, and this tidewater country, where the earliest settlements were made, is "South of the Piankitank".
Ware Church, on the Glebe and Glen Roy Plantation, had many Rectors before 1680 -- (of four of whom we have absoute record, The Rev. Mr. Murray, The Rev. Mr. Gwynn, The Rev. Mr. Wadding, and The Rev. Mr. Clack) in which year (according to records in the Va. Historical Society) "a petition was presented to the Colonial Court and Council" that a second church building be allowed in the parish, and which, tradition says, is this present church finished after ten years labor in 1690, about two miles inland, near the head of Ware River, on a part of "Mordacai's Mount", now "Church Hill".
This solid brick building is eighty by forty feet; and built of bricks made in a brick yard to the West of the Church property by local brick-layers, with imported artisans from England to glaze the ends; the roof is slate, put on in 1854, the rafters, hand-riven of oak, twelve by eighteen inches, the whole structure being very imposing.
That its architectural lines are unsurpassed is the unanimous opinion of well-known architects from England, as well as of those in this country, who are constantly visiting the church to study its perfect form.
The foundations run six feet below the surface at a thickness of five feet; above the ground the walls are four feet thick to a height of three feet, and from there to the roof, along the sides and to the ridge-pole in the gable ends are three feet thick.
Churchmen of old builded to the Glory of God for their own time and for the ages to come!
The simple dignity of the interior is greatly enhanced by twelve large and impressive arched windows -- five single windows to a side, each having 38 panes, set in walls three feet thick, with unusual window-seats sloping down-ward inside, which an English architect assures us was the style of rural Churches of the Seventeenth century in England -- to allow the light from outside to fall on the Prayer Books of the worshippers on the side aisles. In the two double windows over the Chancel the small square panes of glass, sixty in number, are set in frames with a heavy wooden up-right centerpiece, across which, under the Roman arched fan, runs a similar piece, giving the very beautiful effect of a perfect cross in the windows.
Entirely across the West end of the Church, runs a gallery with panelled front, which is reached by a quaint panelled stairway.
The three entrances to the Church -- North, South, and West -- are very handsome, with rounded brick cornice over the west door, and brick cornice running to a sharp gable above the North and South door-ways. For a time, when there was no Rector, the Church was used by "invading forces" for anything but religious purposes, and the North and West doors were torn off, but the South door has the original "H-L" hinges and is made of two thicknesses of plank, each an inch thick, the outside panel running straight up and down and the inside panel being diagonal -- it is said to turn the Indian arrow-heads.
During this period the Church was kept open every Sunday morning for Services, by Dr. William Taliaferro, Senior, going over from "Church Hill" and reading the Prayers and Lessons and Psalms to a congregation consisting of a lone member, Mrs. Van Bibber of "North End", who made the responses sitting in one of the front pews in the Church. In the Winter she wrapped herself in many shawls and had a charcoal brazier by her feet. Bishop Meade speaks of these two devoted Church members and their untiring efforts in behalf of the Church.
The building in those days was heated by two stoves, one on the North and one on the South side, with long stove pipes from each running through the corresponding wall, through which stovepipes the North Wind blew respectively at its own volition and the congregation had to sit on whichever side the Wind did not select.
The interior of this Old Church has been restored and greatly beautified by memorials to late members of the Church, by munificent gifts, and through the interest and earnest work of the congregation under the auspices of the Chancel Guild.
Ware Church has the unique distinction of having had three Rectors -- The Rev. James Clack, The Rev. Charles Mann, and The Rev. Wm. Byrd Lee -- who occupied its Pulpit for forty-five years, forty years, and forty years, respectively, the latter being for many years longer the much loved Rector-Emeritus.
Standing in the midst of its old cemetery enclosed by a colonial brick wall, and surrounded by sturdy oaks, walnuts, and pines of virgin growth -- which afford Sanctuary to every song-bird of this Tidewater Country, whose joyous songs of praise to their Creator can be heard every summer's day -- Ware Church is one of the most hallowed and peaceful spots in this early Christian settlement of the Old Dominion, and proves the loyalty of its congregations in that it has been ministered to by every Bishop of the Diocese from Bishop Madison, prior to May 3, 1792, to the present honored Bishops, the Rt. Rev. Frederick Deane Goodwin, D.D., the Rt. Rev. W. Roy Mason, D.D., and the Rt. Rev. Robert F. Gibson, Jr., D.D. The Parish considers itself fortunate in its many Rectors, the present one being the Rev. Reginald Wells Eastman.
