Church of Our Saviour, Oatlands

The Church of Our Saviour at Oatlands is a Reformed Episcopal parish located south of Leesburg, Virginia.

Founded in 1871 as a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, it met for most of its history in a historic church building on the grounds of the Oatlands plantation.

[1] While the parish's beginnings are not well documented, services are believed to have begun during the Civil War in a log cabin on the Oatlands plantation that also housed the blacksmith's shop.

Sewall Hepburn—the future grandfather of Katharine Hepburn—was called to assist the rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg.

[1]: 1–8 By 1875, Hepburn noted that the Oatlands congregation had grown to the point of building its own church and that the then-twice-monthly services would be insufficient.

[1]: 7 The congregation fell on hard times in the 1890s with Davis's death and the sale of Oatlands by the Carter family to Stilson Hutchins in 1897.

The Eustis family became significant benefactors of the church, repairing the building, installing a balcony and adding a chancel with a memorial stained glass window.

The Finleys provided funds to replace the church's roof, renovate the parish hall and install a new organ.

He presided over restoration of the buildings (including the addition of running water in 1978), added Sunday school and confirmation classes and introduced the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.

[1]: 58 Amid the growing acceptance in the Episcopal Church of theological liberalism and recognition of LGBT clergy during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Our Saviour became part of the Anglican realignment movement.

Jonathan Kell, the church became the largest in its diocese by attendance,[8] attracting a number of congregants from nearby Patrick Henry College.

The church's cornice is formed by large-scaled crown moldings, and a scrolled iron bracket is connected to the tympanum.

The arched opening to the chancel is trimmed by flat wood banding and Doric pilasters at either side.

The new church also replicated 15 brass memorial plaques from the historic church as well as the altar window, and added new plaques in memory of Elijah and Anita Graf White, Anton Schefer and Virginia Bowie, whose gifts and bequests had made the new property possible.

Stained-glass altar window in the historic church in memory of Katherine Powell Carter. A copy of this window sits above the altar in the 2016 church.
Church of Our Saviour viewed from James Monroe Highway in 2023.