Blog > Mepkin Abbey - How Moncks Corner Got Its Name
Just south of Moncks Corner, SC on the banks of the Cooper River you will find Mepkin Abbey. Mepkin Abbey is home to an active community of Trappist monks that welcomes both men and women retreatants.
Formally known as Mepkin Plantation, the monks have been living beside the Cooper River since 1949, being good stewards of the land and gardens. It’s interesting to note that Moncks Corner isn’t named so because of the Trappist Monks. The Cusabo Indians called it Makkean.
In 1936 the noted publisher and philanthropist Henry Luce, who established both Time and Life magazines, & his wife Clare Boothe Luce purchased the property. Clare Boothe Luce, (who was the ambassador to Italy) commissioned noted NY and Charleston landscape architect Loutrell Briggs to design and build an extensive landscape garden near the high bluff on the property where she and Henry planned to build a grand permanent home. Briggs used low brick walls to delineate rooms in the terraced space, including two small lakes in the design along with beautiful Live Oak trees to shade lavish plantings of azaleas, camellias , and other flowering shrubs. He called it the "Camelia Garden".
The Luces also planned to build a house for their daughter, Ann Clare, but she was killed in an auto accident in 1944 at age 20. Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, along with Ann Clare, and other family members are buried in a family plot in the highest of the garden rooms. This 3200 acre is a natural area and botanical garden, now known as Mepkin Abbey Botanical Gardens.
In 1949, the Luces donated a large part of the property to the Roman Catholic Church to be used by the Trappist Order's Gethsemani Abbey. Twenty-nine monks of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) came from Gethsemani, Kentucky to found the Abbey. The seventy-plus years of monks praying here have indeed made this Sacred Ground, as they consider their land to be their greatest asset at Mepkin Abbey.
In addition to the Botanical Gardens, there is a Columbarium Wall with niches to inurn the cremated remains of loved ones, allowing you the opportunity to help support a continued monastic presence in the Low country through the purchase of a columbarium. The Clare Boothe Luce Library, funded chiefly by the Henry Luce Foundation, opened in 2001 to house the monastic collection of philosophy, theology, monastic studies and art, and rare books. Named after the friend and patron of Mepkin, the Library provides 11,000 sq. ft. to house some 43,000 volumes on two floors.
Mepkin also hosts an annual Creche Festival around the Christmas Holidays with over 100 Nativity scenes from all over the world, made from everything from match sticks to mosaic tiles!
Lastly, Mepkin’s friends and neighbors can now reserve the abbey gardens for the celebration of a marriage. Because of the monastic nature of the property, up to 50 guests are permitted, and only wedding ceremonies may take place on the property; receptions are not allowed.
For more information visit: https://mepkinabbey.org/
Call me today for information about neighborhoods near The Abbey.
