Gothic Revival Church Ruins in Plantersville, Georgetown County
US Route 52 (north of Georgetown), Plantersville, SC 29440
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free roadside viewing. The ruins themselves are fenced off and structurally unsafe; do not climb on or enter the remaining walls.
Access
Limited Access
Roadside grass and gravel, surrounded by pine forest. Uneven ground in the cemetery section.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1876 · National Register of Historic Places · Gothic Revival Architecture by Louis J. Barbot · Pee Dee Rice Planter Congregation · Civil War-Era Construction
The first church on this site, known as Prince Frederick's Chapel Pee Dee, was built in 1848 on land donated in 1834 by the Rev. Hugh Fraser. Its congregation was drawn from the rice planters who worked the Pee Dee River bottomlands and from those enslaved on their plantations.
In 1859, a building committee that included Robert Francis Withers Allston, Davison McDowell, and Francis Weston approved construction of a new, larger Gothic Revival chapel designed by the Charleston architect Louis J. Barbot. Work was interrupted by the Civil War. The chapel was finally completed in 1876 with a $1,700 contribution from John Earle Allston.
With the collapse of the South Carolina rice economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, congregants moved to more populous areas and the building fell into disrepair. By the mid-1960s the chapel was structurally unsafe, and the building was demolished in 1966. Only the front wall and bell tower remain.
The ruins were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The site is owned and stewarded by community preservation interests in Georgetown County and is documented in Historic American Buildings Survey records held by the Library of Congress.
Sources
Prince Frederick's Chapel is widely known in regional folklore as Old Gunn Church. The name derives from local tradition that Philip and Edward Gunn, two brothers contracted to build the church, were working on the structure when one of them, accounts vary on which, fell from the roof to his death. Stories diverge further on whether the surviving brother was at fault and on whether the death was the cause of the chapel's later misfortunes.
The Shadowlands-era description that conflates Mr. Gunn with an overseer of enslaved laborers does not appear in mainstream historical sources and should be treated as legend rather than documented history. The site's actual association with slavery is the broader fact that nearly all of its founding congregants were rice planters who depended on enslaved labor, and that enslaved people worshipped on the same grounds. That history is more substantial and more sobering than the Gunn legend.
Visitors to the ruins describe an unusually heavy quality to the air at the site, voices in the surrounding pines, and occasional bell-like sounds despite the absence of a bell in the tower. The Atlas Obscura entry on the site notes that the chapel is more accurately described as "haunting" than "haunted" - the ruined Gothic facade, isolated in pine forest off US 52, produces a strong atmospheric response in visitors without any specific named apparition. The site is fenced off for safety; visitors are asked to respect the perimeter, view the structure from the road, and not approach the unstable walls.
Notable Entities
View the surviving front wall and bell tower of the 1859-1876 Gothic Revival chapel from US Route 52. The structure is fenced for safety; the surrounding pine forest holds the cemetery with Civil War-era graves.
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