Pinckney Retreat today is a private coastal community of 77 distinctively beautiful homesites offering breathtaking views of the great salt marsh, antebellum gardens and lush Lowcountry live oaks. Community dock and amenities.
Beneath the great spire of the 1724-era St. Helena's Episcopal Church, for example, historic tombstones were used as operating tables by surgeons during the Civil War. The crenelated battlements and vivid canary hue of the Beaufort Arsenal date to 1795, and house an array of military and civilian artifacts in the city museum. Beneath grand-columned porticoes along Bay Street, antebellum houses feature this area's unique foundation of oyster shell and lime, known as tabby.
Several of the great Greek Revival mansions along the Beaufort River are open to the public as house museums and inns, featuring stunning eliptical staircases, marble fireplaces, and walls that bear hand-written notes from Civil War soldiers.
The second-oldest city in South Carolina, Beaufort was founded in 1711 by English settlers who named the town for one of the creators of the Carolina colony, Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort. Pronounced "Byew'-fort", as is the surrounding county, the city quickly established its vital role in the economic, social and political forces shaping of South Carolina.
The fertile soils of its dozens of surrounding sea islands helped develop huge wealth in rice, indigo and cotton plantations, and importation of large numbers of West African slaves to work the fields established among these remote areas a singular cultural legacy we know today as Gullah-Geechee.
historic tombstones were used as operating tables by surgeons during the Civil War. The crenelated battlements and vivid canary hue of the Beaufort Arsenal date to 1795, and house an array of military and civilian artifacts in the city museum. Beneath grand-columned porticoes along Bay Street, antebellum houses feature this area's unique foundation of oyster shell and lime, known as tabby.
