The Lord Ashley Archaeological Site
As part of Historic Charleston Foundation’s initiative to expand the Ashley River National Register District, a team of local archaeologists and HCF staff conducted archaeological testing and limited excavation in 2009 on a privately owned property along the upper reaches of the Ashley River in Dorchester County. There, archaeologists uncovered the foundation of one of the oldest – if not the oldest—brick structures in the Carolinas. The brickwork is a part of the 17th century settlement of Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, one of the original eight Lords Proprietors of the Carolina colony. It was a fortified plantation and Native American trading outpost, actively used for just a decade, 1675-1685. This outlying settlement may be studied on its own and in relation to the contemporaneous first English settlement site in Carolina, today known as Charles Towne Landing.