Middleton Place, Historical plantation in Dorchester County, United States

Middleton Place is a plantation on the southwest bank of the Ashley River in Dorchester County, South Carolina, about 15 miles northwest of Charleston. Its historic district covers roughly 110 acres of a 7,000-acre plantation and includes the surviving south flanker, six shaped turf terraces with bowed centers, the excavated Butterfly Lakes, and a rice mill pond formed by a dammed creek.

John Williams, an early South Carolina planter, established Middleton Place in the 1730s and likely began the brick main house, choosing a hilltop site with a view of the Ashley River. His daughter Mary brought the plantation as a dowry when she married Henry Middleton in 1741, and the property took the Middleton name. Henry completed the Jacobean-style house and added two flankers in 1755. Union soldiers burned most of the house in 1865, and the 1886 Charleston earthquake toppled the walls of the main house and north wing.

The site demonstrates 18th-century craft techniques, with blacksmiths and carpenters working according to period methods. Visitors see how everyday objects were made that served both the main house and the quarters where enslaved people lived.

Tours through the surviving building and garden complex take between one and three hours depending on the route. Sturdy footwear helps, as paths cross gravel and uneven ground.

The symmetrical water pools reflect rows of trees and were designed according to French garden principles rarely seen in colonial America. A cypress swamp borders the formal areas directly, showing the local river landscape.