The Oaks Plantation....once

In the photograph we are at The Oaks Plantation house which had most recently served as the clubhouse for The Oaks Country Club. The house sat on about 1,600 acres of land at Goose Creek in Berkeley County, South Carolina.

This building was constructed around 1892 to replace the previous structure of 1840 which had burned. Around 1930 the place was sold and much of the elaborate Georgian woodwork was stripped along with other significant appointments. Between the Civil War and the onset of the Great Depression of 1929, many fine old plantation houses were badly ransacked.

The Lowcountry did not recover from either tragic period until World War II production brought many jobs and much cash to the Charleston area. Hard times starved a lot of people, but it certainly saved some wonderful old buildings.

The well worn adjective, stately, seems appropriate when placed in any description of The Oaks. This is how it looked in November of 2005. When it burned down last night the fire took some two hundred years of history away forever. It's gone and no modern replication of the structure would rise above the level of poor imitation.

We lose these grand old buildings to developers, neglect, hurricanes and fires. They don't come back like your wrecked Jaguar from the body shop. The just don't come back.