CHURCHES IN MT. CARMEL SOUTH CAROLINA

Mt. Carmel, though mostly abandoned, has a number of well-preserved churches, and though I'm sure they are of different denominations, I won't be mentioning them here. Suffice it to say they are all Christian churches.

 

The first is a tall Classical Revival church with arched windows on the side and peaked windows on the front. It is quite heaven-oriented, what with its tall ceiling and skyward-stretching lines. The glass is highly convoluted, making me believe the church may be older than the town proper, which was fully populated in the late 1880s. This structure has some elements that hint at the mid 1800s.

 

This next church has several details I like, but it is apparent that it hasn't been used as a church in some time (like the others were). At the right of the picture is an attached steel shed that is presently used to store large equipment, but some elements jump out to tweak the observer right on the nose. The chimney on the left side of the building is a simple single stack that likely vented a wood or possibly a coal stove situated about three quarters of the way from the back to the front of the church. That way the preacher and the first few aisles of the congregation could keep somewhat warm in the winter months (to hell with those in the back). I especially like the doors at the front with their Palladian transom and arched panels, but it's the exquisite trim mouldings that really make the door stand out. Some pieces are missing, but their depth, contour and stand-out ZZZZAAPP! just takes the eye and holds it. It did to both of mine, in fact.

 

I also like the huge hasp and the ancient padlock that proves how long this church has been unoccupied (uncongressed?).
 

 

The thing must be petrified with paint. In addition, the shutters on the windows seem superfluous. They face north, so they aren't there to protect the interior from the sun, and their hinges are of many different sizes, making me wonder just how often they were used. But a lot of work went into their fabrication, so they weren't an afterthought.

 

Finally, I present the Church on the Green. Mt. Carmel has a huge multi-triangular green that has probably seen some picnics and parades in its life, but is just a crossroads now. What I wouldn't give to run a metal detector there. At its west end stands this church. I present it to you now.

 

The lines are turn-of-the-century late Victorian, but it has several Vestiges that scream out to me. The corners and door treatments are right out of the Classical school, with Doric pilasters and triangular pediments yelling out for Greece to come and claim them. Just what is behind the side doors in the entry vestibule, I don't know, and I should, as one of the doors was open. I probably looked inside but was so overwhelmed that I don't remember. Closets, I think.

I especially like the gingerbread in the arch; several pieces are broken, but a lot of work went into fabricating and placing it there. It also seems to buck the austerity the rest of the building exudes, as if to say that there is more to this place than just rules and angles of approach. There is a touch of curvilinear jocularity.

 

Just don't tell the preacher.

My favorite features of the building are on the roof.

One IS the roof.

 

 

The roofing is composed of terne metal that likely took weeks to install. Each flat panel was crimped carefully into the run below it to create a waterproof surface, and each side overlapped the raised 'v' of the other piece which made an interlocking surface, and these were crimped as well. This is before the soldering of any edges, of course. If you consider that "terne" is a basic sheet steel that is hot-dipped into molten zinc, then crimped into place, you might get the idea that this stuff stands up pretty well to the weather and the years. You'd be right. Just look at how little paint still adheres to this roof. Yet it doesn't leak.

But I said "features" which means there is more than one.

The ladder is not one I would care to climb. Permanently installed to (I guess) access the now-missing chimney (a ridge patch to the right shows where it was), which would occasionally spring a leak, this has likely remained unclimbed for many decades.

Good thing.

OLD STORE, MT.CARMEL SOUTH CAROLINA

 

Mt. Carmel is one of those towns that most people pass at fifty miles an hour, and thirty seconds later someone says, "Did you see that town?"

If the State Patrol was there, you'll know JUST where you wuz.

The speed limit is less than thirty, so slow down a bit and you might see something from a hundred years ago.

Get out and wander about and you will have entered a time warp.

The entire town is still there, from the furniture store to the ruins of the bank to the Grande Dames of the Antebellum. There are at least three churches, and none of them has seen a service for many years, possibly decades. Most of the buildings are uninhabited.

But they are also preserved. With their grounds often intact.

The layout of the entire town is almost just as it was at the turn of the nineteenth century.

SOMEBODY'S looking after it. Apparently a bunch of somebodies.

I'll be featuring this little burg in my next few installments. I already featured a few choice chimneys from there back a while ago.

So if you're ever tooling along the Savannah River in McCormick County, slow down and look around, because Mt. Carmel disappears awfully fast.

Saints preserve us and say it ain't so.

 

I was immediately drawn to the shutters. Likely hand-planed from local longleaf pine, they are fast and solid. The design is austere, but a faint pride of workmanship seems to flow from them. It was only faint because there was more work to do.

 

But the doors grabbed me and held me the way certain Vestiges do.

 

They have seen many successions of locks and handles, as evidenced by the round escutcheon (now empty of spindle and knobs) and by several holes that hint at a long-gone mortise lock. A closer exam of the latest padlock and hasp, partway up the meeting stile, shows that this door isn't even locked in the proper sense; the hasp is only attached to the door without the T-astragal and the screws are missing from the static door. If either of these doors were ever static, being in a store. In fact, the only thing keeping the doors together is the short hank of clothesline looped through one of the holes in each door and tied together in front.

The same lighthanded but striking workmanship can be seen in the lower panels of the doors that can be seen in the shutters; probably the same craftsman. But it is the upper panels that really catch my eye.

There are surface-mounted planks covering what was once possibly glass but more likely screen (which can be seen on the left panel sticking out behind the wood). The tops of these planks are fastened to the door with small tongues of steel shoved through loops of the same metal fastened to the upper rail.

 

It looks like these were not created when the store was closed up, but were likely put in place every night while it was in operation.

What I REALLY like about the panels is that they appear to be made of extremely wide wood. Still very thin (around a quarter inch), but wide as the Savannah. The cracks in them are curved and follow the grain of the wood, proving they are not laminated from smaller pieces.

The small sign at the right says "KINDLY USE THE TRASH CAN."

I like the word "kindly." I think it should be used more often.

I can almost hear the friendly arguments of the benchsitters outside while the sudden sound of the flyswatter slaps the front counter inside.

The screen door slams.