Somerset Place Historic Site, North Carolina

In 2001, BRTW created and raised the timber frame structures for the reconstructed four-room home where enslaved families once lived, as well as the plantation hospital at Somerset Place. Somerset Place is a state historic site offering a realistic view of 19th-century life on a large North Carolina plantation. Originally, this plantation included more than 100,000 densely wooded, mainly swampy acres bordering the five-by-eight mile Lake Phelps, in present-day North Carolina.

The historic site includes 31 of the original lakeside acres and seven original 19th-century buildings. With the goal of accurately representing the lives and lifestyles of the plantation's community, the Overseer's House, one-room and four-room homes where enslaved families once lived, and the Plantation Hospital were reconstructed.

Representative of building materials used during the period, cypress timbers were used in the design of the timber frames for the home and Plantation Hospital. Cypress trees grow in swamps and are naturally pest resistant. They would have been a natural choice for a building material in this region in the 19th century.

Blue Ridge Timberwrights is proud to have participated in reconstructing this remarkable historic site.