Church of the Holy Trinity

National Register Listing

Street Address:

SC 13 and SC 29, Ridgeland, SC City Vicinity (Jasper County)

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NRHP Nomination

Record Number:

S10817727004

Description and Narrative:

The Church of the Holy Trinity, constructed ca. 1858, is the third building associated with an Episcopal congregation formed in the early years of the nineteenth century by Grahamville planters. The church is architecturally significant as a notable example of the Carpenter Gothic style. The style developed as a carpenter’s interpretations of the English Gothic Revival architecture of the early nineteenth century, with the masonry designs of the English architects translated into wooden construction. The proportions of the church, the asymmetrical composition, the wheel window, and the buttressed tower are exemplary of the Gothic Revival; the interpretation of these elements in wood, along with board and batten sheathing of the church, are typical of Carpenter Gothic. The three-staged bell tower has an exterior entrance to the stairway leading to the gallery, which was the old slave gallery and which now houses the pipe organ. The interior is especially noteworthy for its hammer-beam timber ceiling, and for its nineteenth century yellow pine furnishings. The church is set in a grove of large live oaks, which were set out in the nineteenth century by the ladies of the congregation. These trees add considerably to the visual appearance of the church. Listed in the National Register March 25, 1982.

Period of Significance:

circa 1858

Level of Significance:

State

Area of Significance:

Architecture

National Register Determination:

listed

Date of Certification:

March 25 1982

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