JAMESTOWN — Doors quite literally came off of their hinges this week as staff at Historic Jamestowne opened up the 1907 Memorial Church to make way for a new hand-carved pulpit.
The piece, designed and built by local volunteers in the Fords Colony Woodworkers club, was received as a welcome addition to the historic site.
According to Historic Jamestowne, the Memorial Church is the fifth church to stand on the site, with the previous four dating back to the 17th century. It was in this church where the first Representative Legislative Assembly convened on July 30, 1619. After a large portion of Jamestown Island was acquired by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities in 1893, the construction of the Memorial Church was approved to celebrate the settlement’s 300th anniversary.
In 2019, archaeologists conducted additional research to understand the structure of the 17th century building and have since worked to recreate its footprint and design. Today, both the 1907 brick church and the 17th century outline are on display as staff continue to add design elements in order to enhance visitor experience.
The latest of these projects, a new pulpit, was created over the past year through a partnership between the Fords Colony Woodworkers club and Historic Jamestowne. The pair have been working together since 2018 to design the doors, pews and chancel rail that now stand in the church. Through research done in the United Kingdom by Michael Lavin, director of collections and conservation, and Dave Givens, former director of archaeology for Jamestown Rediscovery, it was presumed that a pulpit may have commonly stood in 17th century English churches when settlers landed in early Jamestown.
“We presented a whole bunch of options to these guys and we collaborated with them to come up with the final potential design,” Lavin said. “But they wanted to do something really special for the middle.”
The unique design located in the center panel of the pulpit is based off of a Kings Touch token found at Jamestown. The token dates back to King James I’s reign in the 16th and 17th century. The name of the tokens comes from the idea that they were given as souvenirs during the King’s Touch ceremony, a ritual in which a disease impacting the lymph glands was believed to be curable through a monarch’s touch.
These tokens were often made of gold, but the tokens found at Jamestown are made of copper alloy and are believed to be commemorative pieces made to celebrate the coronation of James I in 1603. The intertwined rose and thistle are representative of the union of England and Scotland that occurred during James I’s reign.
The carvings were done by Fords Colony Woodworkers member John McElrath, a self-taught woodworker and carver. He explained that the design holds a special significance to him as he is of both Scottish and English descent. The token carving took him several hundred hours to complete, while the other panels, adorned with leaves, took 1.5 days each to finish. The full piece was also built using some modern and some historical methods.
“We don’t have all of the plans that these guys would have had, so we took some modern stuff and moved it around and turned it into a classical look,” McElrath said. “It’s a great design, it’s tied to the period and it’s beautiful.”
Fellow FCW member Kent Kipling mentioned how impressed he was with how the project came together, saying that 11 woodworkers and five shops worked together to finish the piece. Kipling said he was “proud to work on it.”
The next project in partnership between the FCW and Historic Jamestowne is anticipated to be a new communion table made out of black walnut, a historical detail recorded by settlers in 1608. James Horn, president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, said it’s important to continue to recreate the historic church for visitors.
“We’re standing in one of the most historic churches in the nation,” Horn said. “This is a place I would like many Americans and people from overseas to come, because the message of this church is all about a democratic experiment that started here and has continued ever since.”
Emma Henry, emma.henry@virginiamedia.com
