Charleston's Provost Dungeon

The main goal of our recent trip to Charleston was to visit Boone Hall Plantation. But while in the Lowcountry, I took the opportunity to do a little bit of novel research. And to do that, we went into Charleston's Historic District to tour the Provost Dungeon and old Exchange.

It would be a short, easy tour. Just confirm a couple of points of my research and then find some Lowcountry cuisine.

Old Exchange

We parked behind the building--or perhaps it was the front. What is now the rear of the building once faced the marinas along the Cooper River, and the ships involved in trade. After walking around to the entrance on Broad Street, we climbed one side of the split staircase and went inside.

Once there, I received a bit of a research jolt. Since revolutionary and local planter Isaac Haynes had been hung by the British on the grounds in 1781, I'd hoped all hangings had been performed on the premises. As it turns out, this building, completed in 1771, was used as an exchange and customs house, and the low, arched-ceiling ground floor as a prison only during the British occupation. While the information put a snag in my research, it also threw me into the 1770s, and the American colonists' fight for independence, for as I soon learned*:

• The prisoners held there included three signers of the Declaration of Independence
• Tea seized during protests against the famous Tea Act was stored in the dungeon
• Upstairs in the Great Hall, delegates to the Continental congress were elected
• South Carolina declared independence from England on the very steps we used to enter the Exchange

There's more. So much, I'm on information overload every time I research the Exchange. We've passed this building numerous times during visits to Charleston, never knowing we were passing a huge chunk of South Carolina's, and America's, history.

More research for later. But for now, I had another reason for touring the dungeon on this trip. I had to see the wall.

During her early days of settlement, Charleston, then called Charles Town, was surrounded by a protective brick wall. The east bordered the Cooper River. The west, what's now known as Meeting Street, and the city stretched several blocks north and south of Broad Street. Maps of the original walled portion of the city hung in the dungeon. Click each photo to see a larger version.

Original walled city located in the SE quadrant
of the peninsula now known as Charleson

"View" from the harbor along the Cooper River

In the center of the wall along the river's edge, a portion of the wall ballooned into the water. This "half-moon battery" is the present-day location of the Exchange and Provost dungeon. Thanks to archeology and preservation efforts, a section of the wall is visible inside the dungeon.

As amazing as it is in a photo, I was more amazed to stand on a catwalk over dank water, in a room where America's revolutionaries had been imprisoned in their fight for freedom, and stare down at the wall built by Charleston's founders. If you have the opportunity to visit Charleston, I highly recommend a tour of this historic site.

More more information on the Exchange and Provost Dungeon, go to:
*www.ccpl.org/content.asp?action=detail&catID=6055&id=15796&parentID=5750

If you're wondering if I eventually learned where criminals were hung, I did, thanks to our dungeon tour guide. Executions were performed on a gallows at the Old City Jail. The castle-like structure is the most ominous building I've seen in Charleston, and the perfect setting for the fictional hanging that occurs in my story:

It's currently closed to the public, but at the moment, visitors can tour the interior during one company's ghost tour. Next time.

Boone Hall Plantation

A dusty road lined with massive, shady oaks, heavy with moss. On the right, horses graze in a grassy field. On the left, eight small, brick houses, emptied by war and emancipation.

This is the first glimpse visitors have of Boone Hall Plantation, one of America's "oldest, working plantations", and a piece of Charleston's history.

Though Boone Hall is a favorite destinations for those visiting Charleston, this was our first look at the famous Avenue of Oaks and the plantation grounds that date back to the late 1600s. 

At the time of this writing, the admission fee is just under $20 per adult, but our AAA membership lowered the amount by 10%. The admission granted entrance and covered a variety of tours and a discount on a scrumptious lunch made, in part, with produce grown on the plantation.

After reserving a spot on the tour of the house, we took a motorized coach ride around the grounds. There we learned the plantation was once far larger than it is now, that it produced indigo, rice, then bricks, which were used in buildings in Charleston. At some point, pecan trees were planted, and those not ravaged by time or hurricanes produce pecans to this day.

In addition to the old pecan grove, we saw the stables and the old cotton gin. Passed woods that were once crop land; fields of corn that, in the autumn will become a corn maze; ponds, and marshlands.

And scenery left behind from Alex Haley's Queen, starring Halle Berry:

As it turns out, Boone Hall Plantation is the backdrop for several television shows and movies, and the house was used in Nicholas Spark's movie version of The Notebook.

After the coach tour, we gathered on the porch of that house with other guests and took our scheduled tour. We were immediately surprised to learn it had been built in 1936, replacing an old farmhouse that existed during the war.

Afterwards, we walked down "Slave Street", the row of cabins that were once home to the plantation's slaves. At the time of our visit, each cabin displayed different aspects of slavery, from work and life, to emancipation and civil rights. At one end of the "street" visitors can listen to a History Talk on slave life, and at the other, they can sit in the shade and watch a performance at the Gullah Theater.

As tragic as slavery was (and still is, since human trafficking, as it's now called, still exists despite the lessons of the past) it is history. Our history. And it can't be denied or ignored. I'm grateful that places such as Boone Hall Plantation and the old Slave Mart in downtown Charleston take pains to share that reality and celebrate the Gullah culture that so influences the Lowcountry. But I was dismayed and saddened that while touring Slave Street, both my husband and I were greeted with open hostility by visitors of that culture. One teenager girl, while glaring at me, even commented on the presence of a "white person". And what should have been an opportunity for enlightenment became a source of division. I don't know if ours was a typical encounter, I've not spoken to others who have visited the cabins, but because of it, we'll likely avoid this part of the tour in the future.

After several hours of soaking in this Lowcountry destination, we took advantage of our discount at the nearby Boone Hall Farms Market Cafe, where we enjoyed a lunch that tasted even better than it looked, and stocked up on our favorite Charleston tea.

Despite our encounter at the cabins, it's easy to see why Boone Hall Plantation is high on the list of places to visit while in the Lowcountry. Some tours are seasonal or contingent on weather, so for more information on Boone Hall, including special events such as the Taste of Charleston, Scottish Games, the Pumpkin Patch, the Oyster Festival, and much more, go to  http://boonehallplantation.com/

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