Willis Presbyterian Church and Cemetery, also known as Grace Baptist Church, is a historic

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

and

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

in Willis,

Floyd County, Virginia Floyd County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 15,476. Its county seat is the town of Floyd. Floyd County is included in the Blacksburg- Christiansburg, VA Metropolitan Statistical ...

. It was built in 1954, and is one of six "rock churches" founded by

Bob Childress Robert "Bob" Walter Childress (January 19, 1889 or January 19, 1890 – January 16, 1956) was a Presbyterian minister who was born in "The Hollow," now Ararat, Virginia, and grew up surrounded by the Primitive Baptist tradition. He became known t ...

and built between 1919 and the early 1950s. The building consists of a one-story, gable-fronted rectangular form with a roughly square,

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tower ...

on the building's northeast corner. The building was erected on a poured concrete foundation, and has walls of light framing covered with a thick quartz and quartzite

fieldstone Fieldstone is a naturally occurring type of stone, which lies at or near the surface of the Earth. Fieldstone is a nuisance for farmers seeking to expand their land under cultivation, but at some point it began to be used as a construction mate ...

exterior veneer. an
''Accompanying two photos''
/ref> 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 ...

in 2007.

External links

Stone Churches of Reverend Bob Childress

References

Gothic Revival church buildings in Virginia Churches completed in 1954 Churches in Floyd County, Virginia Protestant Reformed cemeteries

Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Presbyterian churches in Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Floyd County, Virginia {{Virginia-struct-stub

See also

External links

References