Bruton Parish Church

Bruton Parish Church is the historic Colonial era church in Colonial Williasmburg. It is in the middle of the Colonial Williamsburg themed Historic Area, but is an active Epsicopal church and not part of the Colonial Williamsburg enterprise. (A Colonial Williamsburg ticket is not required for admission.)

The present brick church was built in 1715 and success an earleir 17th-century brick structure. Bruton was the offical eestablished Anglican church for the capital of the Virginia Colony. (The name Bruton dates from 1674 and refers to the ancestral home of Virginia colonial Governor Sir William Berkeley.) The only other church in Williamsburg during the colonial period was a Presbyterian Meeting House.

Figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry attended services at Bruton when they were in town for House of Burgesses legislative sessions. Bruton played a role in events leading up to the Revolutionary War by serving as a place of protest against the Stamp Act in 1765 and the closing in the Port of Boston in 1774. (The Governor could not stop what were announced as prayer meetings.)

The church fell on hard times following the Revolutinary War and again during the Civil War. Then, in the 1920s, it was Bruton's Rector, W.A.R. Goodwin, who was instrumental in convincing John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to begin the restoration of Williamsburg. The exterior and interior were restored in the 1940s as part of the Colonial Willaismburg restoration.

Today, the church has the box pews and canopied "wineglass" pulpit of the colonial era. The interior space is beautiful to see and members of the parish will be happy to tell you about the church and it history and appointments. Organ and chamber music concerts are freqently given in the evening.