Fair Lawn Plantation was a large property granted to Sir Peter Colleton, eldest son of Sir John Colleton, one of the original eight Lords Proprietors of the Carolina colony. During the Revolutionary War, the British army first occupied the plantation in July 1781 and turned the mansion, known as Colleton House, into a hospital and armory. Over the summer, British troops, and probably enslaved Black people from the area, fortified Colleton House with an abatis and built Fort Fairlawn about half a mile away. Primarily earthen and garrisoned by about fifty soldiers, the fort was intended to protect the plantation’s Cooper River landing. In September 1781, the plantation served as an important staging ground for the Battle of Eutaw Springs, and afterward it remained one of the few posts outside Charleston where the British kept a strong presence. On November 17, Whig militiamen under Col. Hezekiah Maham and Col. Isaac Shelby attacked Colleton House, but the outnumbered troops inside Fort Fairlawn did not move to defend their comrades. On November 24, the British abandoned the fort. The well-preserved remains of Fort Fairlawn, among the few still-visible Revolutionary War structures in South Carolina, are under private ownership.