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- West Ashley - Attractions
West Ashley - Attractions
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Drayton Hall House & MuseumDrayton Hall House & Museum
Drayton Hall House & MuseumDrayton Hall House & Museum
Charleston, SC 29414
Tours: Guided tour of house - 50 minutes, African-American History Program - 30 minutes
Drayton Hall is an 18th-century plantation comprised of 350 acres and is located on the Ashley River about 15 miles northwest of Charleston. It is an excellence example of Palladian architecture in North America and the only plantation house on the Ashley River to survive intact through both the Revolutionary and Civil wars.
The mansion was built for John Drayton around the late 1730s. The interior spaces of Drayton’s palace were finished with the finest examples of European and Charleston-made material goods, furniture, a wealth of imported ceramics, and fashionable artwork. Drayton Hall was one of the most significant elite plantations assembled in colonial America.
General admission is all inclusive and includes the professionally guided tour of the main house (50 minutes), the African-American history program Connections: From Africa to America (30 minutes), self-guided landscape and nature walks, entrance to the 18th-century African-American cemetery, and our exhibit center—formerly an African American dwelling, it houses changing exhibits, a members area, and museum shop.
Pictures are allowed to be taken inside of the house as well as the grounds and exterior of the house.
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Magnolia Plantation & GardensMagnolia Plantation & Gardens
Magnolia Plantation & GardensMagnolia Plantation & Gardens
Charleston, SC 29414
Magnolia Plantation was founded by the Drayton family in 1676. It is the oldest public tourist site in the Lowcountry, and the oldest public gardens in America. The manor house was burned during the Civil War. In the aftermath of the Civil War and postwar economic disruption, John Drayton opened the gardens to the public,as a tourist attraction, to earn money. In 1870, "Magnolia-on-the-Ashley" were the first private gardens opened to the public.
Magnolia Plantation and Gardens is 464 acres located on the Ashley River. It is one of the oldest plantations in the South. Magnolia Plantation was originally a rice plantation, with extensive earthworks of dams and dikes built in fields along the river for irrigating land for rice cultivation. Of the five cabins on site, four were built in slavery times and one about 1900.
The plantation is now a major tourist attraction, with a totally renovated main house, slave cabins, a slavery history tour, a nature train, petting zoo, a marsh boat tour and the gardens. Cypress Lake on the plantation is home to bald cypress trees which are around 100 years old.
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Middleton Place House & MuseumMiddleton Place House & Museum
Middleton Place House & MuseumMiddleton Place House & Museum
Charleston, SC 29414
Hours: Open Daily: 9:00a - 5:00p
Middleton Place is America’s Oldest Landscaped Gardens. Explore 65 acres of Formal Landscaped Gardens that feature centuries-old camellias in the winter, azaleas in the spring, and kalmia, magnolias, crepe myrtles and roses in the summer. The creation of the elaborate garden was started in 1741 by Henry Middleton, who incorporated design elements like geometry, balance and focal points in the garden.
Middleton Place is an 18th-century plantation that was 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.
In 1865, toward the end of the U.S. Civil War, Union soldiers burned most of the house, leaving only the south wing and gutted walls of the north wing and main house. An earthquake in 1886 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 and his wife Heningham began several decades of meticulously rebuilding the plantation's gardens
The South Flander, today's House Museum, was originally built in 1755 as gentlemen's guest quarters and together with the North Flanker - a library and conservatory - completed Henry Middleton's overall grand design. It is the only surviving portion of the three-building residential complex that once stood overlooking the Ashley River.
Along with the museum, you will find a rice mill, a springhouse, dense woodlands, a Reflection Pool, and a giant oak tree with a trunk over 10 feet in diameter.
The newly rejuvenated Plantation Stableyards enable visitors to relive how slaves took care of animals and rice plantations in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were also skilled in the crafts of weaving, blacksmithing, pottery, and carpentry.
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Old Saint Andrews Parish ChurchOld Saint Andrews Parish Church
Old Saint Andrews Parish ChurchOld Saint Andrews Parish Church
Charleston, SC 29414
Hours:
Monday - Thursday: 9:00a - 4:00p
Old St Andrews Parish Church was built in 1706 and is the oldest surviving church building in South Carolina. Old St Andrews Parish Church is also the oldest surviving structure used for worship south of Virginia. It is South Carolina’s only remaining colonial cruciform church.
In 1723 Old St. Andrews Parish Church was expanded into the shape of a cross to accommodate a growing population. It burned in the 1760s but was quickly rebuilt inside its existing walls. The church was one of the few buildings along the Ashley that Union troops did not burn to the ground during the Civil War.
