Grove Historic District

Grove is a small crossroads village at the junction of Boot and Whitford Roads in West Whiteland Township, Chester County. Its origins lie in a Methodist meeting house built in 1783, and the village grew through the first half of the nineteenth century to include a general store, blacksmith and wheelwright shops, a tavern, a school and a few dwellings. The Grove Tavern, licensed from 1808 to 1871, was the only public house between Downingtown and the Boot Tavern for much of the century. The central building is the Grove Methodist Church, completed in 1888 in green serpentine stone with a slate roof and Gothic windows, and it replaced an 1844 stone church on the same site. The village grew little after the mid-nineteenth century, so its buildings and cemetery remain largely as they were. It is listed for its well-preserved cross-roads character and for its Methodist history and architecture.