place

Runnymede Plantation

Plantation houses in South Carolina
Charles Fraser Runnymede 1800
Charles Fraser Runnymede 1800

Runnymede was a plantation home at 3760 Ashley River Road near Charleston, South Carolina. The land borders Magnolia Gardens to the southeast. The plantation existed at least by 1705 when John Cattell acquired the tract. John Julius Pringle acquired the plantation in 1795 after a fire destroyed the original house. He changed the name of the plantation from Greenville to Susan's Place (a reference to his wife), and still later, changed the named to Runnymede. The name is sometimes spelled Runnymeade. During the Civil War, Union forces burned the second house, and it was replaced in 1882 with a third house by Charles C. Pinckney. Both the second and third houses were built on the foundations of the first house.In 1898, Runnymede, which was 1475 acres at the time, was sold by order of the court, and Mrs. C.C. Pinckney bought the plantation for $200, but the land was subject to a $12,000 mortgage and also a mining lease. The house burned on September 10, 2002. Both the main house and a detached, two-story kitchen house to the north were destroyed. The kitchen's chimney is now the tallest structure on the land. The investigation into the fire closed in November 2002 without finding a cause. The plantation had been bought by nearby property owners Floyd and Shirley Whitfield in 1997.The house was open to the public infrequently but was open at times including 1919, 1929, and 1938. Guests included 20th century painter William Posey Silva.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Runnymede Plantation (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 32.882222222222 ° E -80.093611111111 °
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Address

Runnymede


29418
South Carolina, United States
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Charles Fraser Runnymede 1800
Charles Fraser Runnymede 1800
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Nearby Places

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (Charleston, South Carolina)
Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (Charleston, South Carolina)

Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (464 acres, 187.77 hectares) is a historic house with gardens located on the Ashley River at 3550 Ashley River Road west of Ashley, Charleston County, South Carolina. It is one of the oldest plantations in the South, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Magnolia Plantation is located near Charleston and directly across the Ashley River from North Charleston. The house and gardens are open daily; an admission fee is charged. The plantation dates to 1676, when Thomas and Ann Drayton (née Anna Fox) built a house and small formal garden on the site. (The plantation remains under the control of the Drayton family after 15 generations.) Some of the enslaved people who were forced to work at the house were brought by the Draytons from Barbados in the 1670s. The historic Drayton Hall was built in 1738 by enslaved laborers for John Drayton, grandfather of judge John Drayton II, on an adjoining property. Magnolia was originally a rice plantation, with extensive earthworks of dams and dikes built in fields along the river for irrigating land for rice cultivation. African enslaved people from rice-growing regions created the works. As time went on, these enslaved people developed a creolized Gullah language and vibrant culture, strongly influenced by their West African cultures. They have retained many combined cultural elements from West Africa to this day in what is known as the Gullah Heritage Corridor of the Lowcountry and Sea Islands of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Ashley River Historic District
Ashley River Historic District

Ashley River Historic District is a historic district located west of the Ashley in the South Carolina Lowcountry in Charleston, South Carolina, United States. The Historic District includes land from five municipalities, almost equally split between Charleston and Dorchester counties. The district includes dry land, swamps, and marshes of the Rantowles Creek and Stono Swamp watershed.The historic district includes historic and archaeological resources associated with the rice culture and phosphate mining of the early-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, and the hunting plantations and timber industry preserves of the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. Historically, the Wando, Cooper, Ashley, Stono, and Edisto rivers served as the primary transportation routes in the Lowcountry. These waterways were used for exploration and settlement, the movement of goods, and the cultivation of staple crops.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Its boundaries were increased from 7,000 acres to 23,828.26 acres on October 22, 2010.It includes some of the following separately listed sites as contributing properties: Ashley River Ashley River Road Fort Bull Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Trestle Drayton Hall, a National Historic Landmark; Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (Charleston, South Carolina); Runnymeade Schoolhouse Middleton Place, another National Historic Landmark Old Dorchester; The Laurels MacLaura Hall

Middleton Place
Middleton Place

Middleton Place is a plantation in Dorchester County, along the banks of the Ashley River west of the Ashley and about 15 miles (24 km) northwest of downtown Charleston, in the U.S. state of South Carolina. Built in several phases during the 18th and 19th centuries, the plantation was the primary residence of several generations of the Middleton family, many of whom played prominent roles in the colonial and antebellum history of South Carolina. The plantation, now a National Historic Landmark District, is used as a museum, and is home to the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States.John Williams, an early South Carolina planter, probably began building Middleton Place in the late 1730s. His son-in-law Henry Middleton (1717–1784), who later served as President of the First Continental Congress, completed the house's main section and its north and south flankers, and began work on the elaborate gardens. Middleton's son, Founding Father Arthur Middleton (1742–1787), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born at Middleton Place, and lived at the plantation during the last years of his life. Arthur Middleton's son and grandson, Henry Middleton (1770—1846) and Williams Middleton (1809–1883), oversaw Middleton Place's transition from a country residence to a more active rice plantation. In 1865, toward the end of the American Civil War, Union soldiers burned most of the house, leaving only the south wing and gutted walls of the north wing and main house. The 1886 Charleston earthquake toppled the walls of the main house and north wing.The restoration of Middleton Place began in 1916 when Middleton descendant John Julius Pringle Smith (1887–1969) and his wife Heningham began several decades' work of meticulously rebuilding the plantation's gardens. They had New York architect Bancel LaFarge design a stableyard complex of barn, stable, work buildings, and cottages; the buildings were constructed of brick salvaged from the ruined main house. In the early 1970s, approximately 110 acres (45 ha) of the 7,000-acre (2,800 ha) plantation—including the south flanker, the gardens, and several outbuildings—were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. During the same period the Middleton descendants transferred ownership of the historic district to the non-profit Middleton Place Foundation, which presently maintains the site.