June 12, 2003
Community social to be held at historic church Saturday
Event to promote preservation of Burns Belfry
by Lucy Schultze
The Oxford EAGLE
Area residents will have a chance to peek inside a tattered
treasure as Burns "Belfry" Church is opened for a community social
Saturday afternoon.
Slated for restoration as a precious piece of Oxford's
history, the 1910 structure stands on the site where ex-slaves first
built their own house of worship. Its congregation left for a larger
building in the 1970s, and since then it has been partitioned into
office space.
Most recently, it was the Oxford office of author John
Grisham, who donated it last fall to the Oxford-Lafayette County
Heritage Foundation to be restored and used as a cultural center by
the African-American community.
"We want to knock down the walls inside and make it one big
meeting place, like the church was originally," said Maralyn Bullion,
OLCHF president.
The heritage foundation, in partnership with the Oxford
Development Association, has already raised more than half of the
$20,000 match required to receive a $100,000 grant awarded by the
Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Bullion said.
Total costs for the restoration are expected to top $500,000,
and preservationists are hoping more grants will come through. One
look inside the old Belfry, empty for the past four years, reveals
how far restoration efforts have to go.
Leaks in the roof have bowed the ceiling and crumbled the
sheetrock upstairs; from one room you can see outside without the aid
of a window. The floor downstairs is covered with brown swirls of
carpet glue, layered over linoleum tiles, with the original wood
planks buried somewhere beneath.
In the Belfry's front room, where ladies in fancy hats once
entered on Sunday mornings, the ceiling tiles are falling in and the
walls are spotted with black mold.
"We were going to cover (the wall) up, but we want people to
know what we have to work with," said Cynthia Parham, ODA president.
"It's just amazing that something so beautiful from the outside can
be so terrible inside."
The building's exterior, however, is just where the work must
begin to make the structure sound again. Over time, the mor
tar between the bricks has deteriorated into fine particles of sand
that can be literally swept away by a gust of wind or a fingertip.
The Belfry's restoration, slated to begin in early 2004, will
begin with work to replace the mortar and shore up stud supports.
Meanwhile, OLCHF's Jim Pryor, project manager for the restoration,
said the building is currently stable enough for visitors to walk
around inside.
Saturday's social will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. outside the
Belfry, where chairs and tents will be set up. Music will be provided
by Wiley and The Checkmates and by The Jones Sisters.
A short program at 5 p.m. is designed to introduce
restoration plans and will feature the Rev. Ollie Rencher, new
chaplain at St. Peter's Episcopal Church and grandson of a former
Burns Belfry pastor.
Refreshments will be provided in outside tents, and community
members will have the chance to "Buy a Brick" for $5 each, symbolic
of saving the Belfry building piece by piece. Any other donations
will also be accepted.
The Belfry is located at 710 W. Jackson Ave. across from the
Lafayette County Detention Center.
For more information or to get involved, contact Parham at
236-1331, Pryor at 234-4087 or Bullion at 234-3299 or
mbullion@watervalley.net.