Springfield Plantation House, Eutawville South Carolina
Built for Joseph Palmer. The records of the building of the house are extant and show that it was built by George Chamolin, who commenced work on October 20, 1817, and finished on June 17, 1818.
The house is very broad and deep and is covered by a gable roof of vast proportions. At the apex is a pair of large squat chimneys with the traditional plaster necking. The gable ends are treated as pediments, but their Treat height gives them an ungainly aspect. The house is two stories above a high basement, with the usual fenestration. It has a central triple window on the second floor. The lower windows are treated with decorative frames of pilaster strips and entablatures. Sheltered by the usual front porch the double doorway Is of great elaboration, as are those of the little wings. In the latter case the windows and door are grouped in a Palladianesque motive. The posts of the main porch are slender turned columns, but in the wing porches (perhaps not original) square tapered shafts are employed. The cornices of the main porch, the house, and the wings have delicate shallow modillions.
The plan comprises a pair of equal drawing rooras in the front with an intercommunicating door, and a door to the porch from each. These rooms have a pair of windows on each outside wall and a fireplace in the rear wall, with a door to the hall at one side. This rear hall has a stair against one wall and a pair of closets facing it. At the rear are the doors to the flanking rooms.
The woodwork of the interior possesses elaborately gouged, reeded, and bored ornament reaching its climax in two huge frontispiece mantels. The mantels proper have pilasters with an overall honeycomb pattern in gouged work. The architraves they support are carved with diminutive sunbursts and fluting, and the friezes with a profusion of large, small, half, and quarter sunbursts. The cornices have channeled dentils, with gouged rope mould above, and a carved chain ornament on the fascia. The high overmantel is composed of four pilasters similar to those below, with a wide paneled space between the two center pilasters and. similar narrow spaces between the center and outside pilasters. These latter do not line with the pilasters below. The effect is restless, and the relationship of the mantel to the overmantel is poor. The paneled areas of the latter are divided into groups of small panels, all with supplementary applied mouldings with cut corners.
The main cornice of the room matches the minor cornices, though the corona here is carvea and the soffit of the cymatiumn is enriched with strapwork. The frieze below is carved with alternating circular and elliptical sunbursts at large scale, which are repeated at very small scale in the dado cap. The latter is paneled, with subsidiary applied moulds. The windows and doors have pilasters and entablatures matching those of the mantelpieces, elsewhere in the house unostentatious trim is used with good effect. Behind the house are the ruins of the kitchen chimney containing a domicel oven.