Excavation stirs interest in history

Contractors might come across lost Quarter House

Sometime this winter, contractors for Noisette Co. will begin excavating a parking lot at the old Navy base to turn it into a basin lake park.

They don't expect to find any remnants of the two canals that ran between the Ashley and Cooper rivers, any coins, pipes or musket balls from what could have been 4,000 soldiers camped between them. They don't expect to locate the legendary, long lost Quarter House.

But they could.

Somewhere in the narrows of the Neck Area of North Charleston — among the industries, rail lines, interstate and its packed-in neighborhoods — once stood a Revolutionary War fortification the likes of which were unrivaled in the Lowcountry.

In the middle of it stood the Quarter House, the popular tavern and hostel where outland roads converged to become Meeting Street. Nobody today knows exactly where. It's a mystery, one of a very few significant war-era sites in the Lowcountry of which modern archaeologists have found no trace.

The site could well be in North Charleston, a city that dates back to the 1970s and really hasn't been much regarded for Colonial history.

Archaeologist Chris Ohm describes the Neck as a potential treasure trove. Ohm excavated at the Dead House, a powder magazine built near the Cooper River near Riverfront Park, within a mile of planned basin park. He suspects the magazine would have been located somewhere in the vicinity of the camp.

"That whole area going through there on either side (of the Quarter House) would have been an encampment," Ohm said.

The Quarter House was notorious in its time, a roadhouse where Meeting Street forked into two roads inland to the wilds — one traveling up the Ashley River roughly where Dorchester Road travels today, one traveling up the Cooper toward Goose Creek.

Six miles from the town, it was a popular diversion, a recreation for British officers; it became a target for American rebels.

The canals were built as a defense, along with three redoubts near the Quarter House. Trees were cut in a swath two miles long and a half-mile wide, north of the tavern to clear a field for rifle and cannon fire, according to historians. They were dropped so the branches pointed out like spears.

With the soldiers posted, and ships in the rivers on either side, it was as daunting a stand as there was inland of Charleston.

The former Charleston Naval Base parking lot was built over a drainage pipe that itself was built in a marsh bed. It's not likely the tavern or the troops were set in the marsh, and the pipe work likely would have excavated anything that might be there, said Jim Augustin, Noisette vice president, who has taken an interest in the history. He thinks the Quarter House was located farther east toward Shipyard Creek.

Test holes dug at the basin site didn't come up with anything, said Art Titus, Noisette operations director.

"My guess is we're not going to find much of interest," Titus said, "(but) we conceivably could find something." The contractors will be told to keep a lookout.

Reach Bo Petersen at 745-5852 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.

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