Old Chapel

About this property

Old Chapel is a historic Episcopal church building located near Millwood, Clarke County, Virginia. Old Chapel is now the oldest Episcopal church building still in use west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. In 2014, the Chapel Rural Historic District was recognized, and which encompasses both Cunningham parish churches, discussed below, as well as approximately 700 other structures and an area of nearly 10,500 acres. In the 18th century it was known as Cunningham's Chapel for the tavern located nearby at the location of two historic roads—the Old Dutch Wagon Road westward from Alexandria to Frederick Town (Winchester), Virginia and the Ohio River Valley (what in the Federal period became the National Road now route 340) and the shorter east-west highway from Burwell's mill in Millwood (now numbered 255). The original log church authorized by the Virginia General Assembly (when it created the large Frederick Parish with several auxiliary chapels of ease) in 1738 was built some time between 1740 and 1750 (the slow building process led to accusations of malfeasance and litigation before the General Court in Williamsburg). It was reroofed and renovated in 1762, but destroyed during the American Revolutionary War. The current building was authorized in 1790 and completed circa 1793. It was the home parish of Bishop William Meade, who for a time served under Frederick Parish's longtime rector, Rev. Alexander Balmain (of Scotland and later Winchester, Virginia). Meade served as the priest in charge here for 25 years (and effectively moved the parish's headquarters here upon Rev. Balmain's death), although he secured construction of Christ Church in Millwood (as discussed below) around the time of his consecration as assistant bishop of Virginia, and a successor was soon hired for the parish. As a plaque inside relates, Bishop Meade expected to be buried here, but he died in Richmond, Virginia, and was initially buried at the Hollywood, and his remains later moved to the cemetery of Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. Also on the Old Chapel property is a contributing cemetery, originally on land donated by the Burwell family. It holds the grave of founding father (and former Virginia governor and U.S. Attorney General) Edmund Randolph, as well as many members of the Burwell, Nelson and Randolph families. Like the later Meade Memorial Church cemetery (discussed below), it also has a memorial to Confederate war dead. In 1816, population growth (and the donation of land by a local family) led to construction of a wooden chapel of ease about ten miles away at the intersection of the road to Alexandria with the road to Greenway Court, the estate of Lord Fairfax, who initially worshipped here or at what became Christ Episcopal Church (Winchester, Virginia). That chapel was rebuilt as Wickliffe Church in 1853, during the area's era of greatest prosperity, and is itself a historic site.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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