Baynard Ruins, Hilton Head SC

• Address: 84 Baynard Park Drive
• Ruins admission: None listed
• Sea Pines gate fee: $10/day per vehicle (as of March 1, 2026)
• Status: National Register of Historic Places

The Stoney Baynard Ruins are what is left of a plantation house built on the south end of Hilton Head Island around the year 1800, in what is now Sea Pines. The house was made of tabby, a kind of concrete built from oyster shell and lime, and its broken walls are the only tabby ruins of a main plantation house on the island. They stand in a small public park of about six acres, and you can walk up to them without a ticket or a guide.

You will see the place called the Baynard Ruins, the Baynard Plantation ruins, and the Baynard Cove ruins. It is one site. Because it sits inside gated Sea Pines, getting here means passing the gate, which costs visitors a day fee (details below). See Sea Pines for the rest of the plantation.

Baynard Plantation, Hilton Head: The History

The land belonged to Captain Jack Stoney, a Revolutionary War veteran, and was part of a larger holding known as Braddock’s Point Plantation. His family built the house around 1800; accounts range from the 1790s to about 1810. John Stoney died in debt in 1838, and the property passed out of the family.

The next owner was William Baynard, a successful Sea Island cotton planter, who lived in the house with his wife and children until his death in 1849. How he came to own it is disputed. The popular local story is that a Stoney heir lost the plantation to him in a poker game. Other accounts say the Bank of Charleston sold it, and the years given for the change run from the late 1830s to 1845. Treat the poker game as a legend.

Union forces invaded the island in 1861 after the Battle of Port Royal, and the Baynard family left. The house was raided and used as a Union headquarters, and it burned after the war. The plantation depended on enslaved labor, and part of what survives is the foundation of a tabby house where enslaved people lived. Archaeologists from the Chicora Foundation tested the ground in 1991 and recovered artifacts from the site. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

What You Can See at the Ruins

The Baynard ruins are low and weathered rather than dramatic. The main attraction is the tabby wall of the main house, its lumpy surface full of oyster shell. Beyond that, the chimney footing of what may have been an overseer’s house and the foundation of the slave house are marked out on the ground. Informational signs describe the families who lived here. Most visitors treat it as a short stop, not a half-day outing.

These are protected historic remains and the walls are fragile, so look, take photos, and stay off them. Local ghost stories are attached to the place, including sightings of William Baynard, and that is the extent of it: they are stories, not something the signs or the resort claim.

Stoney Baynard Ruins Hilton Head: Address, Parking and Gate Fee

The address is 84 Baynard Park Drive, Hilton Head Island, SC 29928. The site sits between Baynard Park Road and Plantation Drive. Coming along Plantation Drive, the ruins are on your right just after you pass Baynard Cove Road and Marsh Drive. There is one set of Baynard ruins on Hilton Head Island, and this is it. The park has a small parking lot close to the ruins, and recent visitors describe it as holding only a handful of cars.

The Sea Pines gate fee is $10 per day for a standard two-axle vehicle as of March 1, 2026. Property owners, resort guests, and anyone with a Sea Pines rental reservation skip it. We found no separate admission charge for the ruins, and the resort’s own page lists none. Opening hours are not posted in any source we checked, so plan on a daylight visit. Questions go to the Sea Pines Community Services Associates at 843-671-1343.

Hilton Head Island Plantations: Other Historic Sites in Sea Pines

The Stoney Baynard Ruins are one piece of a longer story inside Sea Pines, and the resort lists several other historic sites. The Shell Ring, a circle of shell more than 4,000 years old, is in the Sea Pines Forest Preserve. Braddock Point Cemetery, also called the Harbour Town cemetery, holds the graves of the Chisolm and Williams families, descendants of enslaved West Africans who worked on Braddock’s Point Plantation. Lawton Cemetery, from the rice-growing Lawton Plantation of the 1830s, holds the grave of Thomas Frazier, an early African American Civil War soldier. The resort also marks fifteen Legacy Oaks, live oaks between 150 and 350 years old, each with a bench and a name. For the island’s wider history, see history in Hilton Head Island.

Nearby

For more time outdoors, the Forest Preserve has the trails, and the Harbour Town lighthouse is on the other side of Sea Pines. For the beach, see Sea Pines Beach Club and South Beach. The rest of the Sea Pines activities are in one guide, and for more to do around the island, see things to do in Hilton Head Island.