East Side History Series: Vardrell’s Creek

By Susan Millar Williams, Ph.D. 

You know that spot on East Bay Street just north of the Palmer Campus where it always floods when we have an especially high tide? There is a reason for that phenomenon: you’re seeing the ghost of Vardrell’s Creek, which was filled in and paved over in the twentieth century. When Henry Laurens first started advertising lots in Hampstead Village, in the late eighteenth century, he claimed that ships with a ten-foot draft could navigate it at high tide.

The creek ran through a swath of marshland that bordered the northern edge of the higher ground known as Hampstead Hill, flowing into Town Creek and the Cooper River. It was a favorite swimming hole for boys and men, who sometimes shocked ladies on passing trains by romping naked in its waters. Vardrell’s Creek was also, perhaps inevitably, the site of an alarming number of drowning deaths when inexperienced swimmers grew careless and underestimated the power of the tides.

This 1885 map shows Vardrell’s Creek cutting through the neighborhood. It’s on the lower right side, just above the label for Town Creek. You can also see where the railroad tracks ran across it, giving passengers an occasional titillating glimpse of unclothed flesh.

I used to get impatient and upset when the water rose and slowed my commute. Now I just shrug and say to myself, “Oh, well, Vardrell’s Creek is up.”