"It's a very old church. Hundreds of years old. Most of it [the graffiti] is from the Civil War," a parishioner said to me out in the Pohick churchyard. An Episcopal congregation, Pohick Church started as a chapel of ease in the early 1700s but it was replaced around 1774 with a plan by James Wren nearly identical to Falls Church which he had finished five years earlier. Despite their similarities, Pohick Church is much more interesting to visit in a number of ways.
While the Falls Church largely lacks decoration beyond rubbed bricks and a molded water table with convex and concave shaped blocks, Pohick is ornamented with exterior stonework carved from the Aquia Creek quarry. The four corners are rusticated and there are three doors each surrounded by Ionic pilasters and pedimented friezes. One can certainly see that Pohick feels like an improved upon version of Falls Church with both sharing the arched upper windows and an emphasized side entrance located around from their western façades.
Like Falls Church too, Pohick Episcopal can claim a connection to George Washington who donated gold leaf for its pulpit. Some sources claim that Washington provided input for its design and this is likely fair to say in so much that construction can be a largely collaborative process in many ways. He certainly contributed with finances and financiers as always provide input, anyways.
There are connections to George Mason as well and I have read some articles describing a large crypt that existed on the site once. Known as the Remeum, it was built by one of his descendants called Charles Mason Remey. The mausoleum was four times larger than the church itself with sculptural work and historical reliefs guarded by sleeping lions outside. For himself, Remey imported a marble sarcophagus from Lisbon but the crypt was a frequent target of vandalism and rumored to have been the site of parties. It was demolished in the 1970s.
Vandalism at Pohick Church does not necessarily seem to be malicious though. The Ionic columns and quoined corners are all completely covered in names, initials, and dates from so many different generations there. While the parishioner I spoke with attributed much of it to soldiers, most of the dates are from well before and after the Civil War. Walking around, I made note of markings dated 1813, 1814, 1894, and 1943. And, so much of it is carved with an intense determination like a curved J in "JA Gowdy" pictured below that it is almost as beautiful as the Ionic volute above it. It appears that these visitors were touched by the site's significance and simply felt a need to leave a mark somewhere so special and historic that it not only pre-existed them but it has outlasted them as well.
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