WINCHESTER-CLARKE GARDEN CLUB
TOUR:
CLARKE COUNTY
Sponsored by The Winchester-Clarke Garden Club and
The Little Garden Club of Winchester
10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 26
1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, April 27
Chairman:
Mrs. Norman J. Smith (Patsy)
521 S. Washington St.
Winchester, VA 22601
Telephone (540)-662-7898
E-mail norpats@aol.com
Co-Chairman:
Mrs. Thomas H. Rockwood (Lucy)
101 N. Washington St.
Winchester, VA 22601
Telephone (540)667-3157
E-mail ldrock@verizon.net
Bus Chairman:
Mrs. Nate L. Adams (Liza)
420 W. Cecil St.
Winchester, VA 22601
Telephone (540)667-8139
E-mail liza@nadamslaw.com
INFORMATION CENTERS:
Kimberly’s
135 North Braddock Street
Winchester, VA 22601
Telephone (540)662-2195
Classic Touch, Inc.
3042 Valley Avenue
Winchester, VA 22601
Telephone (540)722-2488
Museum of the Shenandoah Valley
Museum Shop
901 Amherst Street
Winchester, VA 22601
Telephone (540)662-1473
Berryville-Clarke County Chamber of Commerce
101 East Main Street
Berryville, VA 22611
Telephone (540)955-4200
FULL TICKET: $25; single-site admission, $15. Children 13 and older, full price; ages 6-12, full ticket $15, single-site $10; ages 5 and under, free of charge. Tickets may be purchased on tour day at any house open for the tour. An adult must accompany children younger than age 17.
ADVANCE TICKETS: At designated information centers or by accessing www.VAGardenweek.org.
BOX LUNCHEON: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday only, Blandy Farm
library, $13 per person. Reservations due by April 13 with Mrs. John
L. Wood (Mary Beth),
(540) 662-5899.
TEA: Served at Long Branch 1 to 4 p.m. both days.
THE TOUR is set south and west of the village of Millwood. Three properties are on Red Gate Road (Rt. 624), the turn south off Rt. 50 a mile west of the Shenandoah River; directions for the fourth follow. The rolling countryside beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains, a part of Frederick County until 1836, comprises some of that early county’s fertile eastern section settled after the American Revolution by prominent Tidewater families on land owned by those families two or three generations. Young George Washington surveyed much of it. Visitors may begin with Huntingdon or on Red Gate Road. The properties are not handicap-accessible. Walking shoes are strongly recommended. Look for the green arrows.
HUNTINGDON, 500 W. Huntingdon Lane. From
Rt. 50 at Red Gate Rd., go west on Rt. 50 to traffic light at Rt. 340,
north on Rt. 340 1.6 mi. to blinking light in Boyce, continue 0.2 mi. to
entrance on left. From Berryville, take Rt. 340 south 6 mi. to entrance
on right. Built 1830-31 on a portion of the Lord Fairfax grant and
devised in 1831 to Judge John Evelyn Page by his father John Page, Huntingdon
rises tall, a Federal mass of native rubble limestone, as one approaches
through fields where miles of period stone fencing have been preserved. The
1830 original front wing is one-room deep, living room, library and hallway. Through
this hall, a second hall and staircase were added ten years later in a
wing that comprises now the dining room and kitchen. The Meadow,
as Judge Page called his property, was sold in 1859 to his nephew Henry
Huntingdon Harrison, who changed the name to Huntingdon. Since Mrs.
Harrison’s death in 1897, the property has been owned by only two
families.
Original shutters, hardware, woodwork and floors give Huntingdon a rare
aura of Old Virginia. Buttressing these historic elements are fine examples
of early Virginia furniture and old Oriental carpets. Original
mantels in the living room and library are similar, with Winchester layered
shelves and double columns; the mantel in the dining room, like other woodwork
in the 1845 wing, is simpler in the Greek Revival style. The owners have
remodeled the kitchen, in part originally a porch, but maintained the integrity
of the structure.
From the back hall, the visitor exits to a small sitting porch and a
boxwood-enhanced area for entertaining, divided into a sunny garden and a shady
garden. Here the restored 1830 smokehouse defines the shady side. A
log icehouse with perfect stonework and a smaller stone melting pit, along
with a later pump house, complete the near outbuildings. The seating
area has as a far focal point a stone fence with a perennial border planted
in white as a memorial. The cattle farm, with its spacious barns, is
in scenic conservation easement. A Virginia Historic Landmark, listed
on the National Register of Historic Places. Open for the first time. Mr.
and Mrs. Charles H. Schutte, owners.
Clarke County—Long Branch
LONG BRANCH, 830 Long Branch Lane. From
Red Gate Road, turn right on Nelson Road; follow Green Arrows to entrance
on left. Capt. Robert Carter Burwell died of typhoid contracted
during the War of 1812 and may not have completed the Federal brick residence,
with its crenellated wing, on his portion of the Fairfax grant. His
sister Sarah and her husband, Philip Nelson, sold it to the latter’s
nephew, Maj. High Mortimer. Nelson lived there with his wife, nee Adelaide
Holker, until his death during the Civil War. These Nelsons embellished
the facade with columned porticos in the 1840s, adding in the hall Corinthian
columns and an unsupported spiral staircase, using designs by New York
architect Minard Lefever. Earlier, Capt. Burwell had consulted architect
Benjamin Latrobe, who is known to have suggested the back staircase.
In 1986, Harry Z. Isaacs rescued Long Branch, which the Nelson family
owned until 1957, from near-dereliction. He restored the interior, added
a crenellated west wing to balance that on the east, and filled the house with
18th and early 19th century furniture collected in England and this country
especially for it. Before his death in 1990 he established a foundation
to manage the property for the public benefit.
A quarter-mile oval drive set within splendid views of the Blue Ridge,
lined by London plane trees and drifted with daffodils, leads to the Doric-columned
north entrance. Through the traverse east-west hallway, the Ionic-columned
south portico offers a framed mountain vista. The staircase spirals from
the third-floor belvedere to the hallway. On axis from the south entrance,
the perennial bed of the Sheila Macqueen Gardens has year-round interest. This,
along with the rose, herb and hellebore gardens, was conceived by the renowned
British floral designer’s friend Martha Robinson Cook of Boyce and funded
by Americans called the Sheila Macqueen Flower Ladies. Retired thoroughbred
horses live on the near-400-acre farm, which is in scenic conservation easement. A
Virginia Historic Landmark, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The
Harry Z. Isaacs Foundation, owner.
FOXCOTE, 2109 Red Gate Road. The tour’s
newest house was built in the early 1990s for a retired Master of Fox Hounds,
British by birth, as a cozy English cottage. In 2005 the present owners
took advantage of the hilltop location with its Blue Ridge vistas to open
the interior, add a glass-walled dining room opposite the entrance, make
visible the stairwell leading down to the first floor, and install a kitchen
where dinner parties can be held. The now-deceased MFH is paid tribute
in the entrance hall: respecting her horsemanship, murals depict the
countryside, including its historic landmarks, where she led the Blue Ridge
Hunt.
The present owners are also fine horsemen. The crown jewel of
their refurbishment is a new barn seen from the dining room window and on axis
with the front door. Framed by hardwoods and conifers, it is a thoroughbred’s
dream, with brass plaques on stalls where now-retired winners of the Maryland
Hunt Cup and the Iroquois lived in their prime. The barn, with its equine
shower, laundry, tap room and grooming stalls, is on tour.
A New York designer oversaw remodeling the house, building the barn
and furnishing the interior throughout. The banquet scale of the dining
room, with a second-story deck beyond, leads to an intimate living room. From
the entrance hall, stairs lead down to a game room with pool table and bar,
a much-used office-study, and a guest room. A Loudoun County landscapist
has begun installation of an arboretum on the lane to the house, as well as
planting at the entrance to be of horticultural interest. Open for the
first time. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Hoffman, owners.
RED GATE, 914 Red Gate Road. Built of bricks kilned
on the place, with a north wall some three inches thicker than the other
three, Red Gate was constructed in stages beginning with the land purchase
from the Carter/Fairfax tract as early as 1788 by Joseph Fauntleroy. The
house is a well-preserved example of the Federal style typical of the first
half of the 19th century, with period woodwork, doors and hardware. The
high site, originally called Greenville, allows a gentle slope of the Blue
Ridge Mountains to serve as its background, with a glimpse of the Shenandoah
River beyond, while old trees and restored boxwood reduce the perceived mass
of the building. Entrance hall, living room, library and dining room
retain original pinewood floors, recently restored.
Changes were made to the house after 1833 and again in 1933: first,
the Greek Revival front portico, and later a sun porch. Interim owners
changed the name to Red Gate in 1924. The present owner’s father
bought Red Gate in 1973. The present owners have concentrated on restoring
and refurbishing both house and grounds. Edward T. Wilson’s collections
of fine paintings make the house a museum experience. Animalier Charles Emile
von Marke is represented by two large works depicting the cattle that made
him famous; Fritz Thaulow of Norway by an 1890 Impressionist landscape; Alden
Weir by a small portrait of Amerigo Vespucci. These join representative works
by Moinier, Hertog (sheep), Edwin Blashfield (genre), Watts (contemporary of
Constable) and others familiar to aficionados. An especially nice touch:
a pair of 17th century English armchairs covered in needlework placed beneath
portraits of the owner’s paternal grandparents by George Harcourt, a
president of the Royal Academy.
Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins created gardens to complement the house and view. Drawings
by noted landscape architect Ellen Shipman of New York were commissioned in
1936, and in 1937 boxwood was ordered from a Richmond nursery, presumably for
the lower terrace. An English boxwood parterre in the upper terrace has succumbed
to disease, its design remaining in a shady lawn area, but American boxwood
has been admirably reclaimed. A stone structure, possibly a slave schoolroom
or original builder’s dwelling, gives perspective to the meadow beyond,
while, barely seen nearby, a tennis court retains the footprint of a fallen
barn used by the Jenkins for their prize-winning cattle. Open for the first
time by the present owners, Mr. and Mrs. Edward T. Wilson.
OTHER PLACES OF INTEREST (National Historic Landmarks):
These three historic landscapes were restored by The Garden Club of Virginia with funding from Historic Garden Week tours:
STATE ARBORETUM OF VIRGINIA. Rt. 50, 2 mi. west of Millwood. The property of the University of Virginia since 1926, operated now under its Department of Environmental Sciences, 175-acre Historic Blandy Experimental Farm (ca. 1825) is a Garden Club of Virginia restoration site: original stone walls were rebuilt (2004) along Dogwood Lane that once led from the manor house to the farm.
BURWELL-MORGAN MILL. In Millwood. Built by Revolutionary hero Daniel Morgan and operated continuously from 1785 to 1943, this working mill was landscaped by The Garden Club of Virginia, 1971-72.
BELLE GROVE. On Rt. 11, about 15 mi. south of Winchester. The 1794 dressed-stone, Jefferson-influenced manor house overlooks the site of the Battle of Cedar Creek (1864). Owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, it was a Garden Club of Virginia restoration, 1983-86.