Historic Christ Church-Stone Floors

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Stone Floors

View of the stone pavers from the south doorway

Rectangular blocks of Purbeck stone pave the aisles at Christ Church. The stones vary in length and width and are between four to six inches thick. Many other brick churches constructed in Virginia over the eighteenth century employed pavers of sandstone or freestone in their aisles. Robert Carter's mansion house at Corotoman used stone pavers in the basement.

The aisles at Christ Church are paved with rectangular stone blocks of varying dimensions some four to six inches thick, laid directly on the earth. The stone is a Purbeck stone, quarried from the south coast of England at the Isle of Purbeck.

It is a hard limestone, valued by colonial Virginians for its superior wearing qualities. An advertisement in the Virginia Gazette in August 1759 appealed for “about 280 feet of Purbeck and 80 feet of blue Shrosberry stone for completing the Piazzas of the Capitol in Williamsburg.”

More than a dozen brick churches constructed in eighteenth-century Virginia used pavers of sandstone or freestone. Vestry books often referred to these stone blocks as flags or flagstones. At neighboring Wicomico Parish, for example, where a new church (modeled after Christ Church, in fact) was completed around 1771-72 after nearly two decades of proposals and planning, the vestry called for “the Allies to be Laid with good Flagg Stone.”

Bishop Meade noted his admiration for the stone floors in Christ Church during observations made in 1837. “In further evidence of the fidelity with which the house was built,” Meade wrote, “I would mention that the pavement of its aisles, which is of large freestone, is yet solid and smooth as though it was the work of yesterday.”

David Miles’ marker, which lies at the center of the crossing, is also made of a Purbeck stone similar to those used in the rest of the church. Except for some minor repairs and replacements made over the past four decades, the stones probably have lain undisturbed since they were installed.