In connection with this 1617 church, may we digress a moment to mention some contemporary churches outside Jamestown? We have already cited the puncheoned church (c. 1623) on the Eastern Shore. Then there was the Elizabeth City church of 1624, timber-framed, laid upon cobblestone footings, and paved with square tiles; and the wood Hog Island Church of 1628, which measured on the inside twenty by forty feet and which probably had a small tower at the west end. That must have been a tower, because it was not the custom to place a porch at the west end in seventeenth-century Virginia—at least, as far as present research has disclosed. The tower was eight feet wide, but projected only three feet out—big enough, perhaps, to support two or three bells.
To continue the chronology of the Jamestown churches:
4. A wood church, spoken of as "new" in 1636, located next the Reverend Hampton's land, and of which he was the minister. The brick-and-cobblestone footings inside the Brick Church of 1647 at Jamestown may very well have belonged to this "new" wooden church; but they never belonged to Argall's Church, which was located within James Fort, situated half a mile down the James River, near Orchard Run, Jamestown Island.
5. The Brick Church of 1647, of which the original bell tower and foundation are extant.
The tower of this Brick Church at Jamestown is of fine old "English" bonded brickwork, with a belt course of Flemish bond. It was built separate from the main body of the church, but was connected to it at the jambs and tops of the interconnecting doorways—as the floor plan shows. The great walls of the belfry are three feet thick, and the roof was probably battlemented or crenellated.
The main entrance doorway in the tower has a plain, round-headed brick arch, the earliest form of brick church door in the Old Dominion.
In 1907 the main body of the church was reconstructed for the Tercentenary Celebration. It is a single nave and possesses some interesting medieval features: buttresses; pointed and mullioned windows; gables of crow-steps or "tabled offsets"; and a raised tile chancel floor.
The stepped gables were modelled upon those of "St. Luke's Church," often called the "Old Brick Church," Isle of Wight County, Virginia. We are fortunate in having in this country such an excellently-preserved medieval church as "St. Luke's." For years its date was considered "1632"; but the authorities, G. C. Mason and T. T. Waterman, in recent years have assigned to this pile the dates respectively of "1677 or before" and "1682."
