McColley's Chapel is a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

chapel located between Ellendale and

Georgetown, Delaware Georgetown is a town and the county seat of Sussex County, Delaware, United States. According to the 2010 census, the population of the town is 6,422, an increase of 38.3% over the previous decade. Georgetown is part of the Salisbury, Maryland ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

on November 30, 2011.

Description

The property consists of a single-story church facing east-northeast, surrounded by a cemetery. The church proper is a simple wood-framed gabled structure covered in asphalt shingles, with a

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ove ...

projecting from the back and a brick chimney applied to the south side. The facade features an open pediment in the gable and a pair of windows flanking the central entrance, with a wooden sign over the door; each side also has three tall, narrow double-hung windows, with a smaller window on either side of the chancel. The interior is fitted with box pews flanking a center aisle, and a pulpit and altar, also aligned with the center line of the building. The chancel opening has plain casing surmounted by a pediment; the back wall of the altar area is ornamented by column casing supporting a dentil

architrave In classical architecture, an architrave (; from it, architrave "chief beam", also called an epistyle; from Greek ἐπίστυλον ''epistylon'' "door frame") is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. The term can ...

. The cemetery contains burials from 1860 up to 2007. Some plots are surrounded by iron railings; older tombstones are generally of marble and are hard to read. Many of the stones have elaborate low relief, but some stone are simple obelisks.

History

This is the second church building on this land, which was donated by James Rudden in 1857. The first church was built by Trustan P. McColley and was named after him; it was the oldest Methodist church in

Georgetown Hundred Georgetown Hundred is a hundred in Sussex County, Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocea ...

. This building fell into disrepair and was destroyed in a fire sometime in the late 1890s. The current building, its replacement, was constructed in 1898. The church is still used for services and is under the Peninsula-Delaware Conference of the

United Methodist Church The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelical ...

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Delaware Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Delaware Religious buildings and structures completed in 1898 Methodist churches in Delaware Churches in Sussex County, Delaware 19th-century Methodist church buildings in the United States Buildings and structures in Georgetown, Delaware 1898 establishments in Delaware National Register of Historic Places in Sussex County, Delaware