Middleton Place turns back the clock on its stable fencing

SUMMERVILLE -- When Middleton Place opened its stable yard almost four decades ago to showcase domesticated animals historically kept at the Ashley River plantation, something wasn't quite right.

The fencing around the stable yard was not that different from what was being built behind new suburban homes just down S.C. Highway 61.

In fact, the material came from the same place.

"We were embarrassed about what was there," admits Tracey Todd, Middleton's vice president of museums. "It was not historically correct."

But this spring, that's all changed, as the museum property has completed an ambitious project replacing almost a mile of fencing.

This time, it's not the off-the-shelf fencing from the nearest home improvement store. The plantation got design guidance from Museum Resources of Williamsburg, Va., which not only provided the split black locust rails but also spent about a week training Middleton's staff how to install them.

Most of it -- about 3,000 feet -- is a split rail fence made from black locust, a wood that Todd says Native Americans are believed to have brought into the Lowcountry from inland because it's strong and quick to grow.

While Middleton doesn't have good records about exactly what type of fencing was used in its stable yards, it made some educated guesses.

Todd said they are aware of a journal from Henry Augustus Middleton Jr., who was elaborating the tasks or work slaves would be expected to perform in a day.

Middleton wrote that a daily task for three slaves would be splitting 100 rails, "eleven feet long and heavy."

"So we made our rails 11 feet long and heavy," Todd said, even as he notes that this particular Middleton was writing about his plantation in Georgetown County, about 100 miles from here.

Todd said he's also comfortable with the split rail look because such fencing appears often in Lowcountry scenes sketched by antebellum artist Charles Fraser.

Middleton's project actually includes four types of fencing. These varied not only because of the animals they were trying to keep in (or out), but because the fencing was more formal, closer to the plantation's main house.

The palisades-style fencing for the Guinea hogs differs from the fencing for the cashmere goats and sheep.

The split rail is fine for the two water buffalo, a beast brought to the plantation to work like oxen in the rice fields in the mid 19th century. Todd said that after the Civil War, some were taken from Middleton to Central Park Zoo in New York, where they were known as "(Gen. William T.) Sherman's Buffalo."

Middleton Place was helped with the fencing project by an $85,000 state grant in 2008 and a $16,000 S.C. National Heritage Corridor grant last year.

The new fencing not only better reflects this plantation's rich history, but it also has the added bonus of looking a lot more picturesque.