Around Williamsburg - Smithfield

We also enjoyed a trip south of the James River to Smithfield to visit various restored gardens along the way. We visited the old courthouse, and I was surprised to see Macclesfield, my hometown in England, was also recorded as an early settler’s town here. This county is the Isle of Wight, and most of the other names are familiar to us too. St Luke’s church is one of the oldest English churches in the USA, circa 1632, and the only surviving Gothic building with its typical Gothic buttresses, stepped gables, brick traceried windows and timber-trussed roof, just like an inverted ship’s hull of that time. The court of the Colony of Virginia was held here, before the courthouse was built. Above the pulpit was a sounding board, to echo the speaker’s voice out into the congregation, rather than up into the high rafters. The original hour-glass sat on the pulpit, no doubt for the vicar’s reference! There was a tiny early 1600s chamber organ with only 4 octaves of gold keys, the only surviving intact instrument of its kind in the world. The pipes were made to look like part of the painted scene which decorated the front and doors of the organ. Another strange custom here was the many family plots in the churchyard with gravestones showing birth dates only. Apparently these were “ready” for the intended, even those not yet dead!