Baseball has its teams and St. George’s has its docent team which has its opening game on April 30. The season runs until Labor Day. Docents provide tours for anyone – you don’t have to be a visitor to St. George’s from afar. If you are new to St. George’s, this is a way to gain insight on this church’s 300-year history. Guests coming to your home over the summer? This is a worthwhile tour to add to their fun times here. Besides, there are plenty of great places to grab a bite to eat after the tour.
We try to schedule docents for continuous tours 10 am – 12 pm in the morning and 1 pm – 3 pm in the afternoon, Monday through Saturday. We are short of docents this year. Currently, docents will generally be on hand Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning, as well as Friday and Saturday, both morning and afternoon.
If there are no docents when you want to tour, no problem. We have a 15-minute printed walking tour, a card about the church, and a graveyard tour. Short on time? We have a 5-minute graveyard tour. Did you know there is a bench there that’s great for a hot day?
This year we have new resources in two areas -the Stained Glass Windows and Pews. The windows have their own printed tour brochure, a website, “St George’s Glass” ( http://glass.churchsp.org ) and a mobile app in the Google play store (search “St. George’s Glass“). Did you know that one of our windows “Nativity” will be 75 years old at the end of May? The family was found in Georgia and Northern Virginia this year and plan to visit around that time. Both the brochure and website efforts were aided by Hans Fischer, a Belgium visitor in late 2017, who fell in love with our windows and lent his photographic skill in the creation of those resources.
The Pews have a new brochure as well. You can see the original pew layout when they sold the pews in 1849 for the construction of the current church. It paid for the entire church at once! No debt! The sale was described in our history as “exciting and entertaining”, practically “everyone was there” and pews went like “hot cakes.” Also addressed is when they taxed the pews after the Civil War. This never worked particularly well, but is an interesting addition to the story. Finally, we cover the changes to the pew layout since 1849. We have lost pews – see why. Separately, there is a paper on the pew memorial plaques you find on some pews. Loula Brockenbrough Knox’s name is on four pews. Read her sad story.
All the documents are in the tract rack to the left of the red doors inside the narthex. We still have need of docents particularly Monday and Tuesday. If you can spare two hours in the morning or afternoon, then you can be a docent. Don’t know much about our history? Our veteran on the team, Craig Rains, created our docents’ manual and it has been updated to 2018 that will take care of your anxieties. You can become one of our star players. All it takes is a love of working with people who encounter St. George’s and are curious what has gone on here for almost 300 years. Email Ben Hicks or call 540-373-4133 if interested.