Vandals making regular target of historic chapel
By Bo Petersen
Provided
Four people, including a juvenile, were caught by a surveillance camera attempting to vandalize the Strawberry Chapel in March. The chapel dates to 1725.
The Post and Courier
Berkley County Sheriff's Office Public Information Officer Dan Moon points out vandalism at Strawberry Chapel.
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CORDESVILLE — The problem with trying to leave historic places untouched is that they become haunts.
The three-century-old wooden door to Strawberry Chapel now has a patch of unpainted plywood. The window sill alongside has a gash where its security steel bars were pulled from the hinges.
In the yard nearby, a gravestone dating to the early 1800s stands a little off kilter and wobbles from being kicked over.
No, it wasn't ghosts. It was people looking for a thrill.
The chapel adjoins the Childsbury national heritage site dating to the early 1700s. It sits way out of the way in Berkeley County, down a quiet back road on a bluff overlooking the Cooper River.
It was one of the first inland settlements in South Carolina, built along what was at the time the headwaters of the river, the point where deep draft boats couldn't easily go any farther.
Somewhere in its nearly 300-year history, like nearly every other Colonial site along the river and through the Lowcountry, the somewhat forbidding-looking chapel was said to have a ghost.
Thrill seekers have bedeviled it ever since; a few decades ago, wannabe satanic cult members vandalized it.
Over the last five years or so the vandalism has gotten worse — dozens of incidents of bullet holes, smashed tombstones and windows, doors beaten with axes, a 2-foot-thick brick-and-mortar wall broken through and obelisks toppled over.
More than $50,000 in damage has been done, said Robert Ball, secretary of the vestry. The door panel alone will cost $5,000 to restore.
Piece by piece, the original church is being taken apart. Vandals have smashed through the fence to get in, torn down the No Trespassing signs and shattered the Plexiglas viewing window that allowed visitors a glimpse in the church when it was locked.
"It's painful," Ball said. "It's brazen, in broad daylight."
In January someone cut the fence, desecrated tombstones and pried apart window shutters with a crowbar dropped nearby. In February a group of four people again tried to tear open the windows.
Then in March a group of four kicked over a tombstone, pulled loose one of the steel guard bars and beat open a section of the door pane to look in.
After video aired from a motion-sensitive system of lights and video cameras, four suspects in the March incident have turned themselves in to police, and Berkeley County sheriff's deputies are hunting four others in the February incident.
Charged with malicious injury to a place of worship and desecration of a burial ground in the March incident were Bryant Dean Fuller, 20, of North Charleston; John Michael Wrenn, 19, of North Charleston; Kayla Jean Judy English, 17, of Ladson, and a juvenile.
The charges carry a combined maximum penalty of 15 years in jail and $15,000 in fines.
Some of the suspects told police they just did a stupid thing, said Dan Moon, Berkeley sheriff's public information officer.
"Oh, of course. It's on the 'National Ghost Registry,' " Jonathan Leader, state archaeologist, said sarcastically. Vandalism is a problem that haunts nearly every historic site — preserved or not.
The most serious damage is done by looters, but casual, malicious destruction by prowlers or partiers also damages irreplaceable artifacts.
"Kids being kids," Leader said.
Old Dorchester, a Colonial site along the Ashley River, was stripped of most of its brick years ago. In 2008, "taggers" spray-painted their insignias on the 17th century overseer's cabin at McLeod Plantation in Charleston.
The fear of vandals keeps archaeologists close-mouthed and leaves site guardians an unwieldy balancing act: You want the place to look like it did, not like it's imprisoned. Keeping a sense of isolation is part of it.
"The reason to preserve a site is so people can see it, take in the ambience of an historic time. You need security, but it needs to be unobtrusive," Leader said. "Nobody has the money, even in the days when we were flush, to have security guards."
Strawberry Chapel protectors were among the groups who stopped a late 1990s attempt to develop a 90-acre tract that would have overrun much of the Childsbury tract. The goal was to preserve that sense of isolation the development would have destroyed, Ball said.
In the wake of publicity surrounding that effort, the isolation has come back to haunt them.
"We're derned if we do, derned if we don't," he said. Now the chapel's board is changing a long policy of trying to stay below the public radar dealing with problems.
More security measures are being taken, Ball said, and they want people to know it. The recent arrests are the first to be made of vandals on the property. They intend to make more.
"My father is buried at Strawberry Chapel, (generations of) my family is buried at Strawberry Chapel and I will be buried at Strawberry Chapel," Ball said. "We naturally want to protect the property."
Reach Bo Petersen at 843-937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.
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beentook2 (anonymous) says...
It is my understanding that the lowcountry is full of turkey hunters. Rather than paying money out for repairs why not put a bounty on those who trespass on chapel grounds. Tell any hunter armed with a special color paint ball he/she will recieve $100 for every hit on a low life that commits an offense on the Chapel. Also near the Chapel put up pictures of those convicted of violating the Chapel.
Yea, yea I know they will tear down the pictures but when they do, they likwise will be on camera and may just have a paint ball splatter aside their pea brain head. Replacing pictures is a lot cheaper than priceless doors, windows and walls.
April 4, 2009 at 7:50 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Lois_Lane (anonymous) says...
Keep playing that video over and over. Somebody's bound to recognize the scum.
April 4, 2009 at 8:08 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
desspec (anonymous) says...
"Kids being kids"? What an insult to every parent whose kids never did such a thing.
April 4, 2009 at 8:25 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
carolinamommyof4 (anonymous) says...
I have visited here many times. I never realized you weren't supposed to be there. We just walked right in. Yes, there is a place in the fence that is open and you walk right through. Its been that way for as long as I can remember and never fixed so I assumed it was that way for a reason. I've spent hours with my children looking at the graves. It was quite a learning experience.
So are these people trying to see inside the chapel? Maybe they should be open on certain dates for the curious. (with someone there to monitor of course)
April 4, 2009 at 8:36 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
CWL922 (anonymous) says...
Charge the vandals double what it cost to fix the damage. Tha damage is repaired and the chapel gets a donation. If they are caught a second time charge them quadruple the amount to fix the damage. After a while people will realize that it is not worth the pain and money to vandalize to property.
April 4, 2009 at 8:44 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
newbattleaxe (anonymous) says...
Here we have yet another example of South Carolina kids who don't know South Carolina history. If these people had been taught the importance of Childsbury in the colonial economy, and the history if Strawberry Chapel during the Revolution, they might have behaved differently.
And, if their parents/guardians cared, the 17 year old and the juvenile wouldn't have been out at night with 2 men.
These 4, and everyone else who has damaged Strawberry Chapel, have not only vandalized a historic site, they have desecrated a church. I know when some churches are so damaged, it is considered a hate crime. Should we be considering Strawberry Chapel's damage as a series of hate crimes?
April 4, 2009 at 8:48 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
sahid_infidel_mohammed (anonymous) says...
In my country we never insult the dead like this. It is a real shame.
April 4, 2009 at 9:25 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
theronce (anonymous) says...
That's good, sahid; then why is ok to insult Americans.
April 4, 2009 at 9:27 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
SomeTruthPlease (anonymous) says...
Even at that young of an age, I would have found destruction to a church absolutely repugnant. These "kids" have absolutely no religious foundation, no guidance, and their parents are probably garbage. One of them has a MySpace page paying respect to the memory of Cassidy Pendley, who was obviously a friend-I wonder if they've vandalized her resting place yet?
April 4, 2009 at 11:01 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
yird (anonymous) says...
These low lifes are the product of a generation of parents and educators that view children as something special when it comes to protecting their precious self esteem.
Discipline is limited to taking away their IPOD for a day or making them "suffer" quiet time or some other mamby pamby crap.
Maybe if the parents were subjected to public caning as well as being made to pay for the evil visited on the community by their spoiled brats, less of these type incidents would occur.
But first we would have to get rid of a bunch of puke progressives in government that have created a plethora of guidelines that prohibit parents from correcting their children in any meaningful fashion, for fear of prosecution.
As with the gun situation where an occasional nut kills a bunch of people and the anti gun crowd wants to take everyone's guns away, the child protection, advocacy, busy bodies use the occasional abusive parent as a benchmark to measure the behavior of all parents and use that to impose legislation affecting all parents, inhibiting their ability to control their chidren's unruly behavior.
Once again, it's obtrusive government intervention that is at the root of a societal problem.
When will we as a society ever learn, government is NOT the answer?
April 4, 2009 at 11:28 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
UrGatorbait (anonymous) says...
Vandalism, another senseless act of stupidity and selfishness.
I agree about the "kids being kids" they are idiots and my kids never did stupid things like that.
April 4, 2009 at 8:49 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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