What materials were used to build Charleston’s walls?
• Brick and earth were used to built the colonial fortifications along East Bay Street, while the works built on the south, west, and north parts of the peninsula were built primarily of earth. Those earthwork structures probably included a demi-revetment (a low retaining wall enclosing a taller earthen berm) made of cedar piles, however, while the Horn Work and other structures built along the town’s northern line between 1759 and 1780 employed a demi-revetment of tabby (a concrete made of lime, sand, and oyster shells). Between 1776 and 1777 the citizens and soldiers of Charleston erected a breastwork of palmetto logs backed with sand around a significant portion of the peninsula. This type of breastwork, measuring approximately sixteen feet high and sixteen feet deep, was also used to build the first Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island.
