City Directories and History: (Bellefield Plantation) at Hobcaw Barony is a 15,680-acre tract that includes buildings, structures, landscape features and sites associated with the continuing use of the land from ca. 1730 until 1943. Individual components, such as buildings, roadways, cemeteries, canals and embankments, reflect the use of the property over time. They illustrate the evolution of lower Waccamaw Neck from the development of rice plantations, through the antebellum period of concentrated rice cultivation, to the post-Civil War conversion of former plantations to winter resorts where natural and cultural landscapes were conserved for duck hunting and entertainment.
Hobcaw House was built in 1930, and retains a high degree of integrity of design, materials, and workmanship throughout. Its architecture is a good example of the popular Colonial Revival influence that was supplanting the rustic style of earlier hunting club lodges. The house was designed by the Columbia firm Lafaye and Lafaye. Designs of buildings and landscaping at the Hobcaw House and the Bellefield House complexes are typical of properties that were constructed or reused by hunting plantation owners for themselves and their employees. The entire site includes 42 contributing buildings, 53 contributing sites, and 25 contributing structures. Numerous outbuildings include such examples as various barns, pump houses, various sheds, cottages, slave settlements/cabins, and a church. The source of the name lies in the 1718 royal grant to John, Lord Carteret, a “barony” of 12, 000 acres on the southern portion of Waccamaw Neck, called Hobcaw Point. Between 1766 and 1767 the property was surveyed, divided, and sold as several parcels. Listed in the National Register November 2, 1994. [Courtesy of the SC Dept. of Archives and History]
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