Christmas Shopping in ‘The Big House’: Bon Secour’s Swift-Coles Home Hosts Vintage Fair With Half-Price Tours

BON SECOUR, Ala. — Holiday shoppers have a reason to head down the shaded lanes of Bon Secour next week, when the Swift-Coles Vintage and Craft Fair sets up at one of Baldwin County’s most storied historic homes on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6-7.

The two-day fair at Swift-Coles Historic Home will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, with extended hours at the house and tours offered at half the usual admission. Visitors are invited to get a head start on Christmas shopping, enjoy some treats and step inside a riverside home whose history stretches back more than 140 years.

Swift-Coles Vintage and Craft Fair details

• What: Vintage and Craft Fair sponsored by Swift-Coles Historic Home
• When: Friday, Nov. 6, and Saturday, Nov. 7, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days
• Where: Swift-Coles Historic Home, 17424 Swift Coles Lane, Bon Secour
• Extras: Extended hours at the home, half-price house tours and treats
• Good for: Christmas shopping, vintage finds and handmade crafts

Shopping with a side of history

Vintage and craft fairs have become a favorite way for shoppers to find one-of-a-kind gifts while supporting local makers and collectors. The Swift-Coles fair pairs that experience with a setting few shopping venues can match: a sprawling Gulf Coast home filled with antiques and surrounded by historic outbuildings near the Bon Secour River.

The fair’s timing, just after Halloween and weeks before Thanksgiving, gives early shoppers a chance to check names off their lists before the holiday rush. With reduced admission to the house, it is also an inexpensive way for residents who have never toured the home to see it for the first time.

Shoppers should plan for an outdoor and indoor mix, wear comfortable shoes and consider bringing cash, since individual vendors at craft fairs set their own payment policies.

From a fisherman’s cabin to ‘The Big House’

The story of the house begins in 1882, when Thomas Gavin, a local Creole fisherman, built a four-room dogtrot cabin on the banks of the Bon Secour River. A dogtrot is a classic Southern design in which two rooms or pairs of rooms are separated by an open, roofed breezeway that lets air flow through, a practical choice in the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast.

In 1898, lumber baron Charles Augustus Swift and his wife, Susan Platt Roberts Swift, bought the little cabin and moved in with their seven children. Charles and his brother, Ira, owned and operated three sawmills, two of them a few miles north of the home, and Swift Lumber would prosper in the years that followed.

As the family’s fortunes grew, so did the house. The Swifts added a west wing in 1902 and a second story in 1908, along with barns and other outbuildings. Over time the home expanded to 16 rooms and about 6,000 square feet, wrapped by roughly 3,000 square feet of porches. Raised off the ground to protect it from flooding, it came to be known locally as “The Big House.”

The Swift family was also woven into the life of the small Bon Secour community, operating a commissary and post office and building the area’s first one-room schoolhouse.

The Coles era and a gift to Baldwin County

The last member of the Swift family in the area, Susan Nell Swift Marshall, died in 1976. The home was then purchased by Nicholas Coles, a Gulf Shores restaurateur and antiques dealer, who restored the interior to its appearance around 1910 and filled the rooms with antiques ranging from the 1780s to the 1910s.

Shortly before his death in 2007, Coles left the home to the Baldwin County Historic Development Commission. The house opened to the public in 2009 for tours and event rentals, and today the commission owns and operates the property with help from volunteers. Support also comes from the Friends of Swift-Coles Historic Home, private donations and rental fees, which is why events such as the Vintage and Craft Fair matter to the home’s upkeep.

Architecture worth a closer look

Visitors who take advantage of the half-price tours will see a blend of Gulf Coast vernacular and Creole cottage styles, with Queen Anne touches such as refined spindles and columns. A pitched roof sweeps down over a full-length front gallery, and enlarged windows and raised ceilings were designed to move air through the house in the days before air conditioning.

The grounds include a corn crib, a chicken house, a barn and an outhouse, offering a glimpse of what daily life on a working property near the river looked like more than a century ago.

A recognized landmark

The Swift-Coles home has earned several official designations. The Alabama Historical Commission listed it on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1978, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. A historical marker was placed on the site in 2017.

Throughout the year, the home also hosts seasonal events, including a haunted story tour in October and a Christmas Open House in December, making it a regular stop on the south Baldwin County calendar.

About Bon Secour

Bon Secour, whose French name translates roughly to “safe harbor,” is an unincorporated fishing community along the Bon Secour River southeast of Foley. It has long been known for its seafood businesses, oyster and shrimp boats and quiet, wooded roads. The nearby Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge, on the Fort Morgan Peninsula, protects thousands of acres of coastal habitat.

The community’s working-waterfront heritage is part of what makes the Swift-Coles home such a revealing piece of local history: it began as a fisherman’s cabin and grew into the home of a timber family whose business helped shape the region.

Plan your visit

Swift-Coles Historic Home is located at 17424 Swift Coles Lane in Bon Secour. The Vintage and Craft Fair runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6, and Saturday, Nov. 7.

Whether the goal is a vintage treasure, a handmade gift or simply a first look inside “The Big House,” the fair offers a relaxed way to start the holiday season while helping preserve one of Baldwin County’s historic landmarks.