Wexford

The character

Wexford is unlike anything else on Hilton Head — the island's private, gated yacht-harbour community, built around Wexford Harbour, a roughly 37-acre inland harbour that a tidal lock holds at a near-constant eight-foot depth around the clock. Where every other waterfront community on the island answers to the tide, Wexford's lock keeps its harbour full, so residents' yachts and boats stay afloat at any hour: some 280 slips berthing vessels up to 70 feet, tended by a full-time harbourmaster and staff 24/7. The harbour locks out to Broad Creek, which flows into Calibogue Sound and the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway beyond — open water from Maine to the Caribbean. By Wexford's account it's one of only three lock-controlled harbours on the U.S. East Coast, and it's the single thing that sets the community apart in this directory.

Beyond the harbour, Wexford is a low-density, intentionally exclusive enclave on the island's south end — roughly 460 homesites, launched in 1982, with the golf course opening in 1983. Named for County Wexford in Ireland — the port Alexander Trench sailed from in 1690 — it holds its homes to a British Colonial and grand Lowcountry aesthetic under strict architectural review: tabby-and-brick walkways, columned entrances, and copper-domed, gas-lit lamps. At its center sit an 18-hole Arnold Palmer Signature Course — redesigned and reopened in 2011, originally a Willard C. Byrd design that opened in 1983 — and the equity Wexford Club, whose membership is mandatory for every owner and anchors daily life. This is a residential community, not a rental resort — short-term rentals are not permitted — which gives it a settled, members-and-neighbors feel closer to Berkeley Hall than to Sea Pines or Palmetto Dunes.