The popular Ministry of Brewing in Washington Hill is exactly what it sounds like: a brewery in an old church. It got me thinking, are there many former churches in Howard County that are now home to something else?

So my Banner colleague Jessica Gallagher and I set out to find some. Our travels took us to Western Howard County and to a location with an Ellicott City mailing address that’s technically in Baltimore County.

We spent a recent winter day googly-eyed over midcentury glassware, plant-themed puzzles and so many antiques.

Here are a few places we visited:

Westwood Methodist Episcopal Church

In Western Howard County, several local businesses occupy the former Westwood Methodist Episcopal Church on Triadelphia Road: Cultivate Garden & Goods, Twin Thrift Vintage and Westwood Unique Furniture, Home & Garden Decor.

The church was built before the Civil War and expanded in the 1920s. If you enter through the purple door to Cultivate Garden & Goods, you’ll find yourself in the original pre-Civil War church structure, surrounded by a whimsical fairy tale-like plant shop. As you walk across the creaky wooden floors, be sure to look up and marvel at the original high-vaulted ceilings.

Cultivate offers locally made terrariums, pottery, roasted coffee, artisan soaps, bath bombs and more. You can purchase plants or native plant seeds. Cultivate also hosts workshops throughout the year, including on making your own terrarium or a stained-glass creation. The next terrarium class is Saturday, and you can create a penguin at the next stained-glass class on Jan. 17.

Exit the Cultivate space and walk down a small hallway to Twin Thrift Vintage, leaving the church’s original building. When Jessica and I saw Twin Thrift’s space, our eyes lit up. Set up in a former kitchen space, Twin Thrift boasts an amazing curated mix of midcentury glassware, collectible home goods, retro barware, vintage holiday decorations, clothes and more.

Continue down the hallway and you’ll find Westwood Unique Furniture, Home & Garden Decor — a massive space that has antiques from floor to ceiling. Classic stained-glass windows adorn the space, including a gigantic piece right behind the front of the store. Westwood has anything you can think of, from antique mugs to light fixtures to paintings that look like they should be featured in a Wes Anderson movie. We could have spent hours sifting through the treasures.

Oella Church Building

A stone’s throw from Main Street in Ellicott City is Hallowed Ground, another botanical boutique tucked away in an old Methodist church. Located in Oella — which, yes, is in Baltimore County — the plant shop has an Ellicott City mailing address.

Step through the old white church door and encounter a space filled with natural light thanks to the big windows. Some of the windows feature small stained-glass triangles. In the warmer months, Hallowed Ground sells a plethora of plants in the outside courtyard area.

Jessica and I don’t have green thumbs but, just as at Cultivate, we wanted to buy pretty much everything at Hallowed Ground. My eyes were drawn to the whimsical woodland creature ornaments and the rows of greeting cards. There were tons of plant pots, gardening tools and framed insect taxidermy.

The old church, complete with a bell tower, opened in 1904. Years later, an addition was constructed and the church underwent an interior renovation. By the 1960s, though, the congregation had moved and the church was turned into a large sewing room for Dickey & Co., according to a church history displayed in the building. In 1995, the church was restored and converted into offices and studio space.

Hallowed Ground opened in the central space in June 2023. The store uses the loft space as an office and the basement to host craft-making classes.

Providence Episcopal United Methodist Church

Make sure you have an appointment before driving to this former church. The 19th-century building, once a place of sanctuary, spent three decades as a fine art gallery and pottery studio before becoming the home of an interior design business.

Homewood Interiors is by appointment only, and upon arrival we were greeted with “Private Property” and “Dogs on Premises” signs. (However, after perusing Homewood’s website, it appears the dogs are two innocent-looking Labrador retrievers that are the “unofficial greeters” of the property.)

So, although we could not peek inside and calls to the business went unanswered, the outside looked very much like a church. The church’s old cemetery is intact.

According to Homewood Interiors, the church sat vacant for years before Stacia Smith, owner of the interior design company, and her husband purchased it initially as an investment property. But after some thought it became the home of Homewood Interiors, undergoing a “complete restoration transformation” in 2013.