Spanish Wells Hilton Head, SC

Spanish Wells Club, at 1 Brams Point Road, is the community’s gathering place and the one reason most outsiders come in. It is a small, non-profit club with a relaxed, dog-friendly manner, and you don’t have to live in Spanish Wells to join. The clubhouse sits on the edge of Calibogue Sound, and its Holbrook Grill, an informal grill with a patio over the water, is open Wednesday to Sunday from 11 to 6. The club says a renovated clubhouse, with bigger porches, an outdoor bar and a new kitchen, is on the way.

Down by the water there is a deep-water day dock with a covered pier-head, where members fish, crab, launch kayaks and paddleboards and watch the sunset, and a little beach along the sound. There is a fenced pool with keypad entry, Har-Tru clay tennis courts with lights and a certified pro, and pickleball courts, also lit for evening play.

The club and its grill are for members and their guests. For 2026 it charged a $5,000 initiation fee, then $350 a month for a full golf membership with no green or court fees, $250 for tennis and pickleball, and $120 for a social membership, with a lower non-resident rate for people who spend 180 days or less a year here and live more than 50 miles away. Call the club at (843) 681-2819 for today’s rates or a tour.

The course is nine holes, a par 36 designed by George Cobb and played by members since 1969, and redesigned by Clyde Johnston in 2005. It winds past ponds and between live oaks, and two sets of tees turn it into an 18-hole round: play the front nine from one tee and go round again from the other. There are no tee times, walking is encouraged, and there is a practice area and a PGA professional for lessons.

Only members and their guests play it. For courses anyone can book, see our Hilton Head golf courses directory.

Spanish Wells Plantation is unusual among the island’s communities: it was put together from several separate subdivisions, each with its own covenants, which adopted one uniform set in 1981. (Wells East still has its own.) The property owners’ association’s covenants allow only detached single-family houses, each on a lot of at least one acre, no more than two and a half stories high and at least 1,500 square feet inside. No home may be used as a time-share.

The houses vary more than in most planned communities: the association has long set no upper limit on size, so long as a house suits its style, and a waterfront owner can build a dock with approval. The association’s Plans Approval Board signs off on any change to the outside of a home, docks and pools included, and on cutting down any tree a foot or more across. For what is on the market now, see our Spanish Wells Hilton Head homes for sale page.

The name comes from the artesian wells here, where, as the story goes, Spanish explorers stopped to fill their water casks before sailing on. The high ground still has towering live oaks and much of its old vegetation.

Next to the club is Battery Holbrook, a Civil War artillery emplacement on Calibogue Sound. The Union command on Hilton Head named it in September 1864 for First Lieutenant Henry Holbrook of the Third Rhode Island Volunteer Artillery, killed on Morris Island near Charleston the summer before, and the club’s Holbrook Grill is named for him too.

Spanish Wells is off Spanish Wells Road on the west side of the island. It is a place people live, with no hotels and no rental villas. Just outside, on Spanish Wells Road, Spanish Wells Seafood & Produce is a Gullah family’s roadside stand selling local shrimp, fish and whatever is ripe, and a good stop on the way home.

If you want to stay nearby, most of the island’s vacation rentals are in Sea Pines, Palmetto Dunes, Shipyard, Shelter Cove and around Folly Field, and our Hilton Head vacation rentals guide covers the companies that rent them. If you are comparing places to buy, our Hilton Head neighborhoods guide sets Spanish Wells beside the other communities, and our Hilton Head real estate guide covers the whole island.