Attractions: Prestwould Plantation Near Clarksville, Virginia.

Prestwould river side entrance.

This edifice and its appendages stand on a very commanding height half a mile from the Roanoke which is formed opposite the door by a junction of the Dan and the Staunton . . . . The ground to the river is sloping, wavy and highly improved to a great extent up and down, which affords a fine view of the rivers and of an Island between the two latter of upwards of 1,000 acres in which that of cultivation — upon the whole — except New York or up the North River I have never seen anything so handsome.

— Letter from Wade Hampton to Aaron Burr, 25 October 1800.

Prestwould was home to four generations of the Skipwith family.  The builders were Lady Jean Skipwith (1748-1826) and her husband Sir Peyton Skipwith (1740-1805).  The second generation to occupy the plantation, Humbertson Skipwith (1791-1863) and his wife Lelia made modest changes to the plantation in the 1830s, but significantly upgraded the decor with the addition of grain-painted doors and very fashionable French scenic wallpapers by Jacquemart and Zuber.

As noted in the National Historic Landmark application for the property, “The domestic core of Prestwould was one of the most substantial home plantation complexes constructed in post-Revolutionary Virginia, and it survives remarkably intact.”  The surviving buildings include the main house, summerhouse, office, loom house, store, smoke houses and slave houses.  All of the dependencies are down slope of the main house.  The arrangement of the buildings evoke life of the planter gentry in the early 19th century, and they are a significant and unique survivors.

The Saloon at Prestwould. Image reproduced from “Virginia’s Historic Homes and Gardens”, by Chuck Blackley (Voyageur Press, 2009).

The exterior is a rectangular, two-story structure with a hipped roof, built of cream-colored sandstone.  Completed in 1795, the house stands in the center of the plantation complex.  Relatively plain, the house has gable roof porches on the principal façade that faces the road, and the matched rear façade that faces the river.  Having two fronts is an idiom common in the Chesapeake, where travel by the numerous rivers was more common than travel over land.

The interior of the house is especially noteworthy.  The National Landmark Application describes it this way:

Outwardly conventional, Prestwould’s interior is remarkable for its juxtaposition of woodwork that reflects conservative architectural tastes with a circulation pattern so sophisticated as that of any large late eighteenth-century house in America.  What architectural historians Edward Chappell and Willie Graham of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation have called the “marked division between rooms used for entertainment, family life and service” can be viewed as the culmination of a process that began in the Chesapeake a century earlier (Edward Chappell and Willie Graham, “Prestwould Architecture,” The Magazine Antiques, 147 (1995), 158).  Evidence for the preference wealthy Virginians expressed for the careful delineation of public from private rooms survives in the names Sir Peyton Skipwith gave rooms in his new house.  Prestwould’s plan, by means of service stairs, service entrances, and service closets that doubled as service passages, imposed these attitudes on the household, segregating service functions from both public and private rooms and the activities they contained.  Prestwould’s floor plan also created a circulation pattern that rigorously channeled interaction between the family and the enslaved Africans who provided all household services.  Prestwould’s plan, in other words, provides good evidence, first, of the evolution and increased sophistication of interior circulation patterns within the houses built by Virginia’s wealthy eighteenth-century planters, and second, the growing segregation of room function that was both a reflection of the pursuit of architectural refinement in late eighteenth-century Virginia and evidence of on-going adjustments to an enslaved labor force.

With its high degree of architectural integrity and remarkable preservation, its a pity that Prestwould is not so well known as other historic houses.  Its preservation is no doubt aided by its location in rural Southern Virginia, which even today is not that well traveled.  Given that it has not been altered, architectural historians from Colonial Williamsburg turn to Prestwould for information about eighteenth-century buildings, construction methods, and household furnishings and fixtures.  The building and family are well documented, for the Skipwith family papers are preserved at Swem Library in Williamsburg, the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Getting there:

Prestwould is about 30 minutes south of Annefield, located two miles north of Clarksville on US Route 15.  Open April 15 to October 31, Tuesday through Saturday, 12:30 pm — last tour at 3 pm; Sunday, 1:30 pm — last tour at 3 pm.  Gates close at 4 pm. 429 Prestwould Drive, Clarksville, Virginia 23927 (434) 374.8672.  Photography indoors is prohibited.

Grave of Sir Peyton Skipwith.

Summerhouse.

Land side entrance.

 

Attractions: MacCallum More Museum & Gardens in Chase City, Virginia.

Friends visiting from California took an all too quick tour of the Virginia countryside and spent two nights with us at Annefield.  They left Washington to visit handful of wineries up north, toured Monticello, hit a couple more wineries, then headed our way, arriving at 9 pm on Friday.  The next morning with its intermittent drizzle and after a visit with our vineyard consultant, we headed out to see a couple of sights, starting with MacCallum More Museum & Gardens, followed by lunch in Clarksville at The Lake House, then on to Prestwould.  We needed to head back afterwards to finish preparing dinner, but it was a civilized glimpse of Southern Virginia.

During a tour of Prestwould, we mentioned to our guide that we had visited MacCallum More that morning.  This was an ascerbic and entertaining gentleman who told us about the irrepressible “Billy,” Billy being William H. Hudgins, the youngest son of the Chief Justice Edward Wren Hudgins and Lucy Henry Morton Hudgins, the couple who created the gardens at MacCallum More.

Billy, along with his mother, are largely responsible for the design of the garden.  After a distinguished career in the Navy, he became a Senior Cruise Director with the Matson Lines in San Francisco; when he retired from the cruise line in the 1960s, he turned his attention to expanding the gardens.  Billy took an early interest in the garden and collected artifacts for it during his wide-ranging travels.

The gardens began to take shape in 1927 when the Hudgins retained the legendary garden designer Charles F. Gillette to design the first gardens on what was then a 1.24 acre property (Gillette remains an unequalled influence on Virginia landscape design for epitomizing a regional style identified by an understated classicism, attention to detail, and the integration of architecture and the landscape).

Expanded over the years with the acquisition of neighboring lots, the garden now encompasses over six acres.  A museum on the property that was completed in 1996 houses exhibits that help tell the story of the region — on the Thyne Institute, a school for African Americans active from 1875 to 1953; the Arthur Robertson Arrrowhead Collection, the largest public display of Native American arrowheads in the United States, and an exhibit showcasing the Mecklenburg Mineral Springs Hotel & Sanitarium, a unique resort that unfortunately burned in 1909 and was never re-built.  A pity about the hotel, but at least we have this magical garden to enjoy.

Getting there:

For a detailed history of the gardens, see this link.  The gardens are open Monday through Friday, 10 am to 5 pm, Saturday 10 am to 1 pm.  Closed Sundays and major holidays.  603 Hudgins Street, Chase City, Virginia 23924.

Attractions: A Spring Garden Tour.

Historic Garden Week in Virginia began last week.  Known as “America’s largest open house,” proceeds from the house and garden tours go to the restoration and preservation of historic gardens throughout the Commonwealth.  For the voyeur it’s an opportunity to see the interior of some of the most interesting and historic houses in the United States.

We first encountered Garden Week in our pre-winery days, when we had such a thing as free time.  Back in those carefree days we had a house on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and with friends went on a tour of the places open in on Virginia’s side.  The most notable being Eyre Hall, which has been on the tour every year for many, many years.  The owner has such a tradition of hospitality that anyone who wants to may come visit and stroll through the gardens, which are essentially unchanged since the 18th century.  The property has been in the same family for some 12 generations.  The house itself is open only during Garden Week, and is not to be missed.  Other houses on the tours we made were equally striking.  We are still haunted by the dining room at one house that bathed the visitor in the most amazing shade of coral, and another house had the misfortune of displaying antique China on virtually every surface — and sadly, one piece met its maker during our tour, to the horror of the multitude crowding the room.

There are three tours close to Annefield in Chatham (Sunday, April 21), Martinsville (Wednesday, April 24), and Danville (Thursday, April 25).  By the time this post appears two of the three dates will have passed, but make a note to attend next year.  Since these locations are open during the week, it would be impossible to combine the garden visits with a trip to see us — but then, these are all-day affairs and one would likely not have the time.

Prestwould. Image courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

So — let’s plan our own house and garden tour!  Only this one can be made throughout the season.

Begin with a visit to Prestwould, the magnificent  circa 1797 Georgian mansion of Sir Peyton Skipwith and Jean, Lady Skipwith.  Located just outside of the town of Clarksville, Prestwould is open to the public and is a landmark in garden history, being the creation of Jean, Lady Skipwith, the second wife of Sir Peyton Skipwith, seventh baronet.  Her papers wound up in Williamsburg and provide great insight into 18th century garden history.  Indeed, Prestwould is one of the best documented Antebellum plantations in Virginia, and it has one of the largest collections of slave writings in the nation.  We first wrote about the family in another post a couple of years ago; see that post for background on the Skipwith family (“The Clarksville Lake Country Wine Festival (and an Unrelated Ghostly Tale”).

The Saloon at Prestwould. Image reproduced from “Virginia’s Historic Homes and Gardens”, by Chuck Blackley (Voyageur Press, 2009).

The house and garden are fascinating, with the house being especially well preserved, though the foundation that has owned the house since 1963 lacks the resources to maintain the garden to the standards of the Virginia Garden Club.  In 1980 the gardens were restored with garden club resources and because of their inability to keep to the garden club’s standards, that organization released them from their obligation some years ago.  Nevertheless, the gardens are definitely worth seeing, as is the house with its amazing collection of early American furniture and decorative arts.

There are several noteworthy examples of French scenic wallpaper at Prestwould.  Pictured here is the Saloon, in which Humbert Skipwith installed a paper called Le Parc Français by the firm Jacquemart et Bérnard in 1831 and 1832 (the invoices survive among the Skipwith papers).  The dining room features another Jacquemart paper, La Chasse de Compégne, a hunting scene first printed in 1814, and the drawing room behind the Saloon (through the door on the left pictured above) is Jean Zuber’s Jardins Français of 1822.  Jacquemart is no longer in business, but the Zuber Company survives, and it possesses the original wood block prints of several of its 19th century scenic wallpapers and can print a set to order.  

Some of the simpler wallpapers at Prestwould have have reproduced by Scalamandre and are still available (do a search for “Prestwould” on the site to find them).  Exploring the house, gardens and grounds with its extensive outbuildings can occupy a good two hours, so plan to arrive early.

Follow your visit to Prestwould with lunch in Clarksville.  There are a number of places to choose from, but a favorite for its commodious shaded terrace is Cooper’s Landing Inn & Traveler’s Tavern in Clarksville’s Historic District.  Cooper’s doesn’t serve lunch on Saturdays, but they do serve brunch on Sundays, from 10 am to 3 pm.   There are a number of other places, but a reliable choice for a casual lunch on Saturdays and Sundays is The Lake House a few blocks east of Cooper’s on Virginia Avenue.

Image courtesy of MacCallum More Museum & Gardens

From there, make your way to Chase City to see the MacCallum More Museum and Gardens, which has evolved into a cultural center featuring a  permanent display of Indian artifacts and other items of local interest, and eclectic forma gardens featuring architectural elements from all over the world that were collected by Lucy Morton Hudgins, the wife of Edward Wren Hudgins, a former Chief Justice of The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, and expanded by her son, Commander William Henry Hudgins, in the 1940s, 1960s, and 1970s.  The house and grounds were recently placed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.

Conclude your visit with a stop at Annefield and share a bottle of wine with a friend on the terrace overlooking the garden in the back of the house.  Our own garden is coming along — the parterre is filling in nicely, though something happened to the yellow tulips we planted in 2011 (Tulip Monsella) — the squirrels must have consumed them.  We do love the red tulips (Sky High Scarlet) dramatically bobbing above the grey-green foliage of the lavender.  We’ll have to plant more this fall.

We’ve been waiting for the boxwood to gain a bit of mass before bringing some shape to it, and this year the plants are finally touching, so we will prune the boxwood this year.  Traditionally the summer hedging takes place in England on Derby Day at Epsom, which is always the first Saturday in June.  The gardeners picked that day because the Master of the House would otherwise be occupied with the races and not interfere, which makes perfect sense.

Prestwould Plantation, 429 Prestwould Drive, Clarksville, Virginia 23927 (434) 374.8672 (open May through October)

Coopers Landing Inn & Traveler’s Tavern, 801 Virginia Avenue, Clarksville, Virginia 23927 (434) 274.2866 (Sunday Brunch only)

The Lake House, 335 Virginia Avenue, Clarksville, Virginia 23927 (434) 374.4646 (lunch on Saturdays and Sundays)

MacCallum More Museum & Gardens, 603 Hudgins Street, Chase City, Virginia (434) 372.0502 (Gardens open daily 10 am to 5 pm; Museum open Monday through Friday 10 am to 5 pm, Saturdays 10 am to 1 pm.)

Annefield Vineyards, 3200 Sunny Side Road, Saxe, Virginia 23967 (434) 454.6017 (Annefield is open to the public on Saturdays, 11 am to 5 pm, and on Sundays by appointment.)

Where to Put the Thing?

As was mentioned in last week’s post, we’re in the planning stage for the winery building and meeting with architect David Jameson this afternoon.  He had a simple request:  “If possible bring some images and plat of the vineyard.”  Images — we have thousands, but surely he needs something in context.  So on a cold and overcast Saturday afternoon we spun in a circle in the spot where we think the building should go — but ssurely this decision requires an engineer’s blessing?  We made a half-baked panorama from there so Mr Jameson could get a sense of the topography and one of the images appears here.

The site that makes the most sense is the southernmost tip of the property, where Sunny Side Road meets Westview Farm Road.  Sunny Side continues west to the village of Saxe, where it meets Scuffletown Road, which goes over the Staunton River to reach Hunting Creek Vineyards and the rest of the Southern Virginia Wine Trail.  Westview Farm Road takes you down to Route 360, which carries you to the town of South Boston.  That southern tip is a natural meeting point for traffic converging on the site.  The land just beside the road is fairly level, then drops down rather steeply about 25 feet where the land drains into an old spring-fed stock pond on that part of the property.  We know the pond has been there a while because it appears on county soil survey maps dating from the 1950s; the larger pond next to the vineyard was built in the 1990s.

Perhaps the solution is to slip the building into that steep gap between hills.  Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  Meanwhile, somewhere a banker just woke up in a cold sweat.

We also like the site because looking east you take in the entire property and can see the vineyard in the distance.  The elevation at this point is about 542 feet above sea level.  Future plantings in the next couple of years will be on the ridge tops between this point and the existing vineyard.   It isn’t nearly as dramatic as the setting for Linden Vineyards — but Linden is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, while we’re in the rolling hills of the Southern Piedmont, which is a totally different experience.   For those of you who know the vineyards in central Virginia, our land is more like that of Barboursville and Horton.  Their elevation is about the same as ours.

There are also practical considerations — the bridges to the north and west of us aren’t able to handle your typical tractor-trailer, so any delivery would have approach from the east on Sunny Side Road, then turn around and go back to Route 360, some five miles distant.

When you come visit you’ll notice that the roads tend to run on hilltops, while the land falls gently away towards the fertile river bottoms that were reserved for cultivation.  Houses, of course, in the Southern tradition were also sited on hilltops to catch the breezes that made the South tolerable in summer.  Some older grand houses like Prestwould in Mecklenburg County stuck stubbornly to that Tidewater tradition of having two entrances, a river entrance and a land, or carriage entrance.  This building may be the antithesis of that, being stealthily sunk into the earth, rather than crowning a hilltop.  We’d like it not to disturb the neighbors or loom over the landscape like some otherworldly thing, so perhaps this is the way to go.

Don’t forget that we have two events this weekend — on Saturday is the first annual SoVA Wine Fest in Chatham, and on Saturday and Sunday the Virginia Wine & Food Showcase at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington. 

The Clarksville Lake Country Wine Festival (and an Unrelated Ghostly Tale).

The House at Prestwould.

The Ancestry of Sir Peyton Skipwith of Prestwould (1740-1805).

This Saturday, April 9 is the Lake Country Wine Festival in historic downtown Clarksville, Virginia, from noon to 5 pm.  Featuring 16 fabulous Virginia wineries, it’s a great way to start the outdoor wine festival season.  Look for us there!  Clarksville looks and feels like a resort — we love it there.

When you come for the festival, you should find time to visit Southern Virginia’s best kept secret, Prestwould, which is some 23 miles south of Annefield, just off of Route 15 on the way to Clarksville.   The place deserves to be better known among aficionados of Southern culture, 18th and 19th century decorative arts, Georgian architecture, American history and garden history.  To set the scene, we first introduce the people behind it.

Why is the place so little known?  The location has something to do with it, for a complex of this magnitude or quality isn’t expected in rural Southside Virginia, and its association with non-political figures may also contribute, though its builders, Sir Peyton Skipwith and Lady Jean Skipwith are noteworthy in their own right.

Sir Peyton Skipwith, Seventh Baronet of Prestwould in Yorkshire, England, was born 11 December 1740 and died 9 October 1805 at Prestwould in Mecklenburg County.  He married first in 1765 Anne Miller (obiit 1779), who bore him four children; and second in 1788 he married Anne’s sister, Jean Miller (1748-1826).  They raised two daughters, Helen and Selina, and their son Humberston Skipwith (1791-1863) inherited the plantation.

Sir Peyton Skipwith & His First Wife, Anne Miller Skipwith

According to an often repeated legend, Sir Peyton won the land — then some 10,000 acres — in a card game he played with William Byrd, III, though there is no proof of it.   His second marriage to Jean Miller proved a fortunate one, for she was instrumental in preserving the family fortune and Prestwould, which prospered under her watch.  The name, incidentally, means “near the woods.”

Sir Peyton’s family is traced back to Robert de Estotevill, who came to England with William the Conquerer in 1066.  The d’Estouteville family was seated in Normandy.  His son Robert came into possession of a great inheritance by marriage with Eneburga, the daughter and heir of Hugh, son of Baldrick, a great Saxon thane; among other lands he had the lordship of Skipwith.  By the third generation the family took on the name Skipwith.  The Baronet was created 20 December 1622, when James I granted it to Sir Henry Skipwith.  Henry’s son Sir Grey Skipwith, at the time of rebellion after the death of King Charles I joined the cavaliers in Virginia “to avoid the usurper Cromwell”, and there married, and left one son, Sir William Skipwith; this William’s great-grandson was Sir Peyton. This information and the family tree illustrated above are from The Baronetage of England, or The History of the English baronets, and such baronets of Scotland, as are of English families; with genealogical tables, and engravings of their coats of arms, by William Betham (Ipswich: Burrell and Bransby, 1801).

Some say Anne Miller Skipwith is still with us, for reportedly she haunts the Wythe House in Williamsburg.   This story removes us a bit from Southern Virginia, but it’s worth the detour.

Reportedly Sir Peyton would go to Williamsburg when the courts were in session and lodge at the King’s Arm Tavern.  Ivor Noel Hume in Something From the Cellar (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 2005) recounts that a French visitor staying there in 1765 found himself in the company of Skipwith, Colonel William Byrd and others whom he described as “all professed gamesters” who were never happy without dice in their hands.  Sir Peyton is said to have taken other risks, among them an alleged affair with Jean, his wife’s sister.  Legend has it that while attending a ball at the Governor’s Palace, Lady Anne had a violent altercation with her husband (presumably over his indiscretions) and in a fury fled from the ballroom and ran across the Palace Green, losing a shoe in her haste.  Arriving at the Wythe House, where she was staying, she ran up the stairs to her room still wearing the remaining shoe, and there committed suicide.  There are reports that late at night of the sound of a person running up the stairs, and it sounds like they wear a single shoe.

Marguerite du Pont Lee in Virginia Ghosts (1930) does a better job of telling the story:

We do not know — life’s fitful fever ended — to what spot in Bruton Churchyard, and just where, into the keeping of the Great Mother of us all, was consigned all that was mortal of her whom men called Lady Skipwith.  From the musty pages of an old prayer book, still treasured by the Randolphs, may be learned that in 1761, at Corotoman, her daughter, Lelia Skipwith, born in 1767, married St. George Tucker.  It comes to us that her husband was Sir Peyton Skipwith, Bart., of Prestwould, Mecklenburg County.  He married Ann, daughter of Hugh Miller, and secondly her sister Jean.  The record of his faithlessness does not reach us entirely without blemish.  The marriage service shortly after the burial beneath the shadow of Bruton Church occasions ground for belief that jealousy was the cause of Lady Skipwith’s suicide.

Her home was in the Wythe House upon the palace green.  From generation to generation is told the story that one night a ball was given at the palace, and that Lady Skipwith danced in tiny red slippers, upon which shone buckles of brilliants.  While long, long years ago the feet of those Colonial belles and beaux of the dances grew weary, and the music dropped from their song, we may still in the night-time hear the music of the little red slippers upon the stairway, and some few favored of the gods have seen their glorious color!  From “some sphere, we know not where, but we shall know e’er long,” Lady Skipwith returns to Williamsburg!  She is most frequently seen — “a beautiful woman, fully gowned in Colonial ball costume, to come out of a closet in a certain room, look at herself in a mirror and finally pass out of the door.”

A stranger once staying in the room described accurately the dress of which she had never heard and had never seen, for it is hidden away from view in a Williamsburg attic, perfumed with lavender gathered from the garden below.

In this dress of cream satin, Lady Skipwith is said to have danced her last minuet, and then to have hastily left the palace long before the ball as over.  What tragedy in life was responsible for this sudden and mysterious leavetaking?  When the swish of her silken petticoats are heard in the twilight does she long to reveal to us the sorry tale?

Lady Skipwith along of all that merry crowd of revellers returns again and again to remind us by the sound of her dainty slippers on the steps that one night 150 years ago she tripped lightly down the same stairway, and across the green, wearing her little red slippers trimmed with sparking buckles.

Sorry to disappoint, but there is no proof that Lady Anne got into a spat with Sir Peyton at the Governor’s Palace, and we know that  she did not commit suicide, for records show that she died in childbirth in 1779 (we’ve seen several references to this assertion but not the actual record).  Nevertheless, Sir Peyton Skipwith did marry her sister, Jean, some eight years later.  They had to marry in Granville County, North Carolina in order to circumvent a Virginia law that forbade marriage between a man and his deceased wife’s sister.  Fortunately for us, they left a dazzling legacy, leaving us the best documented gentry house in Colonial America, a noteworthy library, and Lady Jean’s notes on gardening, which were a major influence on the restoration of the gardens at Colonial Williamsburg.

We’ll have more on the indomitable Lady Jean, the architecture, the plantation complex, the gardens,  and other aspects of the plantation later — there is just too much to savor in a single post.

Prestwould Plantation is open to the public for tours from April through October.  Stop for lunch in Clarksville, Virginia’s fabulous lakeside town.  West of Clarksville is Buffalo Springs, another storied and interesting destination — but this coming weekend come see us at the Lake Country Wine Festival in downtown Clarksville.