Bastion marker resurfaces in new locale

Six years ago, someone involved in building a new bank at the corner of Meeting and Cumberland streets walked off with one of the city's oldest historical markers.

The bronze plaque was first installed in 1940 to mark the site of the Carteret Bastion, the northwestern corner of Charleston's 17th century defenses.

It was removed from the old SouthTrust bank building before it was torn down, but the plaque never got put back on the new bank that was built in its place.

Instead, it apparently became a private souvenir and was taken to someone's home in Alabama or Tennessee.

Those who noticed its disappearance started to talk about having a new one cast, but before that could happen, the city enjoyed a stroke of luck.

Its new owner suffered enough pangs of conscience that they began quietly arranging for its return — no questions asked. Several weeks ago, it reappeared, and the city has put it back.

But the city didn't remount it on the bank. Instead, it was affixed to a different building across the street, the Tropical Toast at Diana's restaurant.

This is its third location in its 68-year history.

The plaque isn't the only thing that's been lost. No one knows exactly where the remains of the Carteret Bastion are, according to Katherine Saunders of the Historic Charleston Foundation and Charleston's Walled City Task Force.

"The main thing we're trying to do with the marker is to tell people that it was somewhere in this vicinity," she said. "We're just glad that people can see it."

The plaque started off on the Cameron & Barkley Co. building at the northeastern corner of the intersection in 1940 and then was moved to a bank building across Cumberland Street 30 years later. (The Evening Post reported on Oct. 24, 1970, that it was moved from "the wrong building" to the bastion's "actual location.")

Now, it's on the northwestern corner of the intersection, and researcher Nic Butler of the Walled City Task Force says that makes more sense, largely because early maps show that Meeting Street was within, not beyond, the original city walls.

"The bastion might not have been exactly where Diana's is today, it may be smack in the middle of Horlbeck Alley," he said. "Horlbeck Alley didn't even exist until the bastion was taken down."

Butler says archaeology on the southeastern and southwestern corners has turned up no trace of the bastion.

A small dig in 1983 at the northeastern corner also didn't find any trace, though a few brick walls and some rubble were later found by a contractor. No one really thinks that was the wall, though.

Butler says it makes sense to move it to a corner where archaeology hasn't been done. "It's sort of a process of elimination," he says.

The wall was begun in late 1703 and substantially complete the following year, but it was taken down a few decades later.

"There's a lot of contradictory evidence but I'm confident it was taken down sometime between 1731 and 1733," Butler said, "and when they were taken down, they were in really bad shape. They had been eroded or defaced in some form."

While the walled defenses along the Cooper River were built of several feet of brick, the western wall along Meeting Street likely involved simply a moat, an earthen mound that was grassed over and a palisade — a series of cedar logs jutting from the ground.

Today, all five of the city's bronze plaques outlining its original walls are finally back in place.

"It just goes to show that if you wait long enough, strange things will happen and take care of themselves," Butler said.