Preservation at Historic Brattonsville

05/04/2026

The kitchen outbuilding at Forest Hall was built at the same time as the main house in 1854 and is one of three surviving outbuildings. Aside from being a workspace, the kitchen probably also served as a home for the enslaved cook and their family prior to Emancipation. And, it likely continued to be used in a similar manner by Freedmen during Reconstruction.

Currently, a local architect, Jay Rhodes, is volunteering his time to document this building. Jay has spent hours carefully measuring and drawing the details of this important building. These drawings serve as a record of the building’s condition and will help us to plan future preservation projects. We are grateful to our talented volunteers for offering their time and expertise.

03/30/2026

Save the Date for May 17 from 2-3:30 p.m. for our Members Only Behind the Scenes Tour at Historic Brattonsville! Tickets on sale soon.

Rediscovering the Brattonsville Female Seminary to Make It Anew. ✨ Join Sara Johnson, Preservation/Restoration Specialist and Joe Mester, Assistant Site Director, at the recently restored Brattonsville Female Seminary to learn about the process of bringing the 1840 school house back to life.

The tour will include an opportunity to go up the winding stair to see spaces rarely accessed by visitors. A Q&A will follow and light refreshments will be served.

Non-members, you won’t want to pass this experience up! 🖥️ Learn more about a CHM membership at chmuseums.org/membership/ or text “Join CHM” to 833.630.1215.

03/21/2026

Wrapping up the Confederation of South Carolina Local Historical Societies Landmark Conference with a presentation on, “The Soup to Nuts on Caring for Your Heritage Property”.

03/20/2026

03/04/2026

The marks of the tools in the hands of tradespeople can be seen on all the original buildings at Brattonsville. A trace of a line pin pushed into a mortar joint by a mason to help lay a level and flush course of brick can still be seen in a joint of the Original Slave House (circled area in top image). Typically, these impressions are pointed over with mortar as the walls are finished. Although an accidental surviving tool mark, it speaks to the hands that built this building circa 1828.

The illustration of “A Pair of Line Pins of Iron” (bottom image) comes from Joseph Moxon’s 1703 treatise entitled “Mechanick Exercises,” which includes a section on “Bricklayery.”

02/26/2026

It’s another rainy afternoon at Historic Brattonsville which had us thinking about gutters and downspouts. Back in 2020, we worked to restore the Brick House. One of the pieces of hardware we had replicated were the heavy-duty pipe hooks driven into the mortar joints to hang the downspouts on the Brick House (top image). The illustration by Clifford Bayliss (bottom image) published in Scott’s Dictionary of Building (1969) depicts the spike-end of the hook.

01/02/2026

The McCelvey Center auditorium trusses are strong, all the scaffolding is gone, and the “house” is looking great with a fresh coat of paint. Now, we’re working on some non-structural items like stage lighting, audio/visual, curtains, carpets, fire alarms, and HVAC repairs to get the auditorium put back together and ready to host performances again. 2026 looks to be another busy year at the McCelvey!

12/16/2025

We enjoyed being able to preview the Brattonsville Female Seminary at this year’s Christmas Candlelight Tours 2025🕯️

11/25/2025

We are excited to have some new half-round gutters on Forest Hall (also known as Hightower Hall). Our preservation contractor, , completed the installation last week. The oldest photograph of Forest Hall dates to 1895 and shows the house with half round gutters and round downspouts. Interestingly, the tower had (and still has) an internal gutter system. Evidence suggests that the entire house may have had internal gutters, originally. If so, they’d been abandoned for hanging gutters by 1895.

11/12/2025

Work at the Brattonsville Female Seminary continues. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been painting the woodwork with high gloss paint that has been color matched through paint analysis to 1840. We’ve also started to apply white mineral paint to the plaster walls to resemble the original whitewash finish. The front room and classroom wing are really starting to look 1840.

This year’s edition of Christmas Candlelight Tours will provide a sneak peek at these two rooms. Get tickets here: https://chmuseums.org/event/cct/. Otherwise, you’ll need to wait until we finish the project in spring 2026.

10/31/2025

When the auditorium wing of McCelvey Center (formerly York Graded School) was constructed in 1922, a decorative cast-plaster wreath and shield with a “Y” for York adorned the apex of the proscenium wall. During the repair of the auditorium trusses, the wreath had to be removed to shore the underside of the truss above it. The 100 year old plaster casting was very brittle and could not be removed in one piece. The ribbon ornament was broken into about ten pieces. After the structural work was complete, the wreath was skillfully restored and reinstalled by Midwest Maintenance Inc. Rather than re-attaching it with the thin tie wires that were originally cast into the plaster and wrapped around studs, it was securely attached to a gypsum board backing which was anchored into the studs. The broken pieces were fit back together and patched seamlessly. McNeely Brothers Painting finished it off with a fresh coat of paint.