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.
