Tabby chapel ruins on St. Helena Island — built c.1740 for plantation owners, burned in 1886, with a vault whose bricks Union soldiers couldn't keep sealed.
Land's End Road, St. Helena Island, SC 29920
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free, publicly accessible outdoor ruins on county-managed land
Access
Limited Access
Uneven ground among tabby ruins and an active cemetery; unpaved paths with exposed roots and rubble
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1740 · National Register of Historic Places · Colonial Tabby Architecture · Civil War Military Hospital · Sea Island Plantation History
The St. Helena Parish Chapel of Ease was built around 1740 in tabby — the local construction material of lime, sand, and oyster shell — to serve the Sea Island plantation families whose estates lay too far from the parish church at Beaufort for convenient weekly attendance. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and is among the better-documented examples of colonial Lowcountry tabby construction.
When Union forces took the Beaufort area following the Battle of Port Royal in November 1861, the plantation families of St. Helena Island evacuated rapidly. The church was abandoned and saw use as a Union military hospital during the occupation. By the end of the war the building had been substantially stripped of its interior fittings.
The final destruction came in 1886 when a forest fire swept through the area. The fire consumed the remaining roof structure and most of the interior fabric, leaving only the tabby walls standing. Those walls remain today, along with the adjacent cemetery.
Edgar Fripp and his wife Eliza were interred in an elaborate mausoleum in the church cemetery in 1852, designed by Charleston stonecutter W.T. White. During the Union occupation, soldiers broke open the mausoleum searching for valuables. The ruined door was sealed with bricks; when workers returned the following day, the bricks had been neatly removed and stacked beside the vault. The vault was sealed again with the same result the next morning. The contractor abandoned the job. Today the vault remains with only a partial brick seal, as it has stood since the 1860s.
Sources
The most concrete paranormal account attached to the Chapel of Ease ruins is historical rather than contemporary: the incident of the Fripp mausoleum vault seal, documented in multiple Beaufort-area sources, in which workers reported finding their brick seal consistently removed overnight — leading the contractor to abandon the project in the 1860s. The vault has stood partially sealed since that time. The account does not originate from ghost-tour operators; it appears in written sources describing the Civil War-era occupation.
More recent visitor accounts, collected by Beaufort-area publications and lowcountry travel writers, describe apparitions in period dress observed near the cemetery in low-light conditions. A woman dressed in white, sometimes described as carrying a small child, has been reported near the Fripp graves on multiple occasions by unconnected visitors. Whispered sounds, described as prayer or singing, have been attributed to the interior of the standing walls on still evenings.
The site's isolation — it sits off Land's End Road with no adjacent commercial activity — contributes to its atmosphere. Visitors should plan for limited cell service and no facilities. The ruins are freely accessible during daylight hours and are maintained as a public site, though they share space with an active cemetery that deserves corresponding respect.
Walk through the remaining tabby walls of the circa-1740 chapel and the adjacent Fripp family cemetery. The site is freely accessible during daylight hours. The mausoleum with its incomplete brick sealing — the vault Union soldiers reportedly could not keep closed — is visible from the path. Bring water; there are no facilities on site.
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