Moncks Corner

Saturday past I decided to adventure down to Moncks Corner, South Carolina.  Have you been?  The back roads are great!  Cotton fields, autumn foliage, very little traffic, great small towns/crossroads are just some of the things I saw by taking the back roads to Moncks Corner.

The White House Church.  A previous structure on the property was known as the White Meeting House and was given, along w/4 acres of land, to the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1720s.

Providence Methodist Church built 1919-1920.  However, the cemetery dates to 1856.

My first stop was Biggin Church Ruins.  Clara the Second (remember her?) was not feeling a trip to Moncks Corner and refused to find the location which signaled the use of my hand written directions.  Does anyone else prefer an actual map or hand written directions instead of navigation thingies?  I'm starting to!  Anyway, I made it to Biggin Church Ruins...yippee!  And by made it I mean I passed it, turned around, parked on the side of the road, walked down a gravel road, climbed up these not so safe steps, and walked up to the ruins.  (As a side note:  there is a gate entrance that you can drive into the cemetery/ruins area that I didn't see until after I had Indiana Jones'd it up those steps!) 

The Biggin Church Ruins are very haunting (not haunted we'll get to the haunted part of the day in a moment) in their appearance.  Biggin Church was originally built as part of St. John's Parish in the early 1700s and made of logs.  However, a brick building was constructed early 1710s which replaced the original log church.  However, the 1710s brick church burned in a forest fire.  The community/congregation re-built the church only for it to be burned AGAIN by the British in 1781.  The church was built again (for the last time) after the fire in 1781 but burned AGAIN by forest fire in 1899.  Depending on where I was standing I could smell the burnt area.  It's interesting how smells stay with a place.  There is a cemetery surrounding the church that includes many older (1700s/1800s) graves along with more recent graves.

Not far down the road from the ruins is Mepkin Abbey.  A dream!  For serious, can I live here and read by the Cooper river and have picnics, and eat all of the creamed honey with cinnamon.  I spent quite a bit of my day here just wandering around.  Mepkin Abbey was built on the site of Mepkin Plantation.  Mepkin Plantation was home to Henry Laurens (1712-1792).  In 1936, Henry and Clare Luce purchased the property (they are also buried on the property).  Henry Luce (Life, Fortune, Sport Illustrated, etc.) was married to the Clare Booth Luce, the author of The Woman.  The Woman, a play turned into a film, is an amazing all female cast film.  The 1939 film version is my favorite even though the remake (2008) with Meg Ryan is pretty good as well.  Mepkin Abbey was established on the property in 1949.  It is a community of Roman Catholic Monks who are part of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.  Their history goes all the way back to the 6th century in Italy.

Below are woodcarvings located in the garden area of Mepkin Abbey.

After I reluctantly got in my car to leave, this was the view of the entry/exit.....I mean seriously would you want to leave????

The last stop (or so I thought) was Strawberry Chapel.  This chapel is a chapel of ease built in 1720 as part of the Childsbury settlement.  Like Biggin Church Ruins, this chapel was part of St. John's Parish.  Childsbury appears to have been a planter community and the chapel was built as a convenient location for the farming families to worship (instead of travel miles and miles to attend worship services).  I've read that the silver that was used for services at Strawberry Chapel was buried for safe keeping when Sherman entered South Carolina in 1865.  However, the silver was not unearthed until the 1940s.  It was found under a rice mill on a nearby plantation.  The silver can be seen today (very cool!) as it is housed at the Charleston Museum (Side Note:  Have you been to the Charleston Museum?  It is amazing!). 
And of course with most really old structures a ghost story can be found and Strawberry Chapel's spooky story doesn't disappoint (but does lead to many questions).  I would like to point out that when I turned down the road to the chapel (which is located in the middle of nowhere) there was a LARGE fish head laying in the middle of the road (spooky sign #1).   Ok so from what I've read a young girl haunts the chapel.  Which of course is sad because again this place is pretty isolated.  She was said to have been chained to a tombstone by her father & left to die (ummm pretty sure he didn't receive any father of the year awards).  As it is with everything in my life, 1 statement leads to 25+ questions that I have about the subject and my abundance of questions concerning this 'haunting' is ever growing!  Where were the other adults in her life?  Who's tombstone was she chained to?  Was it her mother's tombstone?  Was her father consumed with grief or possibly angry at the person who died that he in a moment(s) of complete insanity chained his child (or was it his child...maybe some big secret was revealed hence the anger) to the tombstone and said see you on the other side????  See many questions!
I am always excited to visit a historic stop but even more so if it has a ghost story to go with it.  This haunted historic chapel was perfect BUT - give me a minute to get on my soapbox - ok so this entire site is gated & the gate is locked (and by locked I mean multiple locked locks), there are private property you will be persecuted signs everywhere and surveillance cameras.  While I hated that I couldn't get close to the chapel and I couldn't explore the cemetery, I completely understand the reason why it is locked/videotaped/gated/private.  Soapbox speech are you ready?  Once upon a time people could walk right up to the chapel and explore the cemetery but that all changed when individuals started going there late at night and vandalizing graves and the chapel.  Because of other individuals stupidity and lack of respect for property, I (along with many many others) cannot explore this property.  It makes me mad!  It only takes 1 bad apple to ruin it for everyone else.  I knew before I went about all the private property matters but still wanted to see what I was able to see standing outside of the gate.  However, I was still mad because of course I should have know that just being able to see it from the gate would leave me feeling like I had missed out on something really great that was just on the other side of the gate.  However, I'm not a rule breaker so on the non- private property side of the gate I stood (end of soapbox speech).  BUT I did notice that crows are very present at Strawberry Chapel.  In certain areas that I would walk the crows would become very vocal and at times it seemed like I was getting ready to be in a scene from Hitchcock's The Birds. (spooky sign #2)

Stopped for a quick lunch, then it was back on the road when I came across Eutaw Springs Revolutionary War Park. 

If you happen to find yourself in Moncks Corner, definitely stop by the ruins, Mepkin Abbey, and Strawberry Chapel (please respect the private property signs).  They are great places full of history to learn and see.

Happy Travels,
Amber