{"id":227,"date":"2015-02-06T00:05:39","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T00:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/?p=227"},"modified":"2015-02-06T00:06:14","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T00:06:14","slug":"old-stone-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/?p=227","title":{"rendered":"This Old Stone House"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DSC_0010\"<\/a>
Vineyard Hill (ca. 1774), on Forge Road in Rockbridge County, Virginia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Early settlement period buildings in Virginia were typically built using locally sourced materials.\u00a0 And by locally sourced, I really<\/em> mean locally sourced:\u00a0old-growth trees\u00a0harvested during land clearing, stones removed from\u00a0fields being prepared for planting\u00a0or from\u00a0mountainside outcrops, and bricks that were shaped from hand-dug clay, then burned in homemade kilns using wood\u00a0cut from\u00a0local forests. Here in Rockbridge County, a limestone-rich area in Virginia’s southern Shenandoah Valley, we are lucky to have\u00a0a few\u00a0spectacular\u00a0stone buildings built with locally quarried limestone.\u00a0\u00a0Vineyard Hill,\u00a0on the Virginia Landmarks Register, is one of those\u00a0special places.<\/p>\n

Begun\u00a0about 1774, the home is built into an embankment with a\u00a0lower-level\u00a0kitchen\u00a0that has a massive “walk in”\u00a0fireplace with old wrought iron fittings. Above the basement, the home was originally one-and-a-half stories, with\u00a0winding boxed-in staircases between levels and interior partition walls constructed with beaded tongue-and-groove boards that\u00a0range in width from 10 to 20 inches.\u00a0 Old photos of the home revealed evidence that the house\u00a0was expanded to accommodate a second story,\u00a0with an\u00a0attic above that,\u00a0in\u00a0the early\u00a019th century.<\/p>\n

Located on one of the old roads traversing the Shenandoah Valley, the home is about a mile south of Buffalo Creek, a major tributary of the James River.\u00a0 It was originally the seat of a much larger farm owned by Alexander Beggs, and later owned by the Weaver and Brady families (associated with Buffalo Forge, a major player in the regionally significant iron industry\u00a0during the\u00a019th century).<\/p>\n

Other\u00a0stone buildings on the Vineyard Hill\u00a0property survive in restored or adapted form, including a fulling mill,\u00a0 and a springhouse with a lined\u00a0spring. There is evidence the old fulling mill, initially built to process flax fibers into linen thread, was later used as a blacksmith shop or for some\u00a0other iron-related activity.<\/p>\n

This property is currently listed for sale with James River Realty.\u00a0 Please contact me if you’d like to know more about it or other historic properties in Virginia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early settlement period buildings in Virginia were typically built using locally sourced materials.  And by locally sourced, I really mean locally sourced: old-growth trees harvested during land clearing, stones removed from fields being prepared for planting or from mountainside outcrops, and bricks that were shaped from hand-dug clay, then burned in homemade kilns using wood cut from local forests. Here in Rockbridge … Continue reading “This Old Stone House”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historic-architecture","category-posts-about-former-listings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230,"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lesliegiles.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}