MYSTERY PHOTO: Interesting brick building

Here’s an interesting brick building in Charleston County.  What and where is it? Send your guess to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live.

Our previous Mystery Photo

Our Nov. 18 mystery, “Not a house in a subdivision,” was of Oakland plantation house, which is about seven miles east of  Mount Pleasant. Congratulations to three readers who correctly identified it:  Stephen Yetman of Charleston; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; and Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas.

Graf provided additional context via popflock.com: “John Perrie, who came from Ireland, acquired 982 acres in Christ Church Parish. He named the plantation after Youghal in County Cork (my note that Sir Walter Raleigh’s home ‘Myrtle Grove’ is in Youghal Ireland). At his death in 1713, the plantation passed on to his daughter. Her husband conveyed the property to Captain George Benison in 1740. It is believed that he built the house. In 1755, Charles Barksdale acquired the plantation. This family controlled the property for the next century.

“In the 1850s, Mary Barksdale and her husband, James McBeth were the owners. He probably changed the name to Oakland. In 1859, Philip E. Porcher bought the property. His descendants have owned it since. Recently a portion of the land has been converted to commercial development. Also about 133 acres (54 ha) of natural habitat has been set aside under a conservation easement.”

Peel provided more information:  “The building was built in 1750 and is believed by some to be the oldest building in Mount Pleasant. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 13, 1977.

“The plantation itself dates from 1696 when 1300 acres were granted to Captain George Dearsly, who sold it to Thomas Hamlin that same year to become the Hamlin Plantation. In 1704, John Perrie of Ireland acquired much of the land and named it the Youghal Plantation, after Perrie’s birthplace town in Cork County, Ireland. As the governor of the island of Antigua, Perrie never actually lived in South Carolina.

“After Perrie’s death in 1713, the property changed hands several times more until it was purchased in 1740 by Captain George Benison who, in 1755 sold it to Charles Barksdale. Barksdale’s descendants lived at Oakland for more than a century until it was purchased by Philip E. Porcher, an ancestor of the Gregorie family, in the mid-1800s. Porcher renamed the property Oakland Plantation, most likely due to the presence of the large oak trees lining the avenue leading up to the house from Porchers Bluff Road.”

Send us a mystery:  If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!)   Send it along to editor@charlestoncurrents.com.