Eyre Hall is a

plantation house A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and ...

located in

Northampton Northampton ( ) is a town and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is the county town of Northamptonshire and the administrative centre of the Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority of West Northamptonshire. The town is sit ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

, close to Cheriton, and owned by the Eyre family since 1668. The property is one of the state's best preserved colonial homes with gardens among the oldest in the United States. The

plantation Plantations are farms specializing in cash crops, usually mainly planting a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. Plantations, centered on a plantation house, grow crops including cotton, cannabis, tob ...

was placed on the National Register on November 12, 1969. It was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

on March 2, 2012.

History

The property where Eyre Hall is located was first patented to the three sons of Thomas Eyre I in 1668 and included . A tract was purchased by Littleton Eyre, a great grandson of Thomas, in 1754 with the purpose to build a family seat and a working plantation. Eyre reported holding 106 enslaved

Africans The ethnic groups of Africa number in the thousands, with each ethnicity generally having their own language (or dialect of a language) and culture. The ethnolinguistic groups include various Afroasiatic, Khoisan, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Sahara ...

that year; some of them were moved to the plantation. The original structure built in 1760 was a -square structure and was a 2½ story wooden home. The house was expanded, an intermediary section was raised to two stories in 1790 and a two-story unit was added in 1807. The house was modernized in 1930 and included a large kitchen, a breakfast room, and a storage building. The property grew periodically over the years too, as a dairy was built in 1760 and a smokehouse was built around 1806. The house is surrounded by

boxwood ''Buxus'' is a genus of about seventy species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box and boxwood. The boxes are native to western and southern Europe, southwest, southern and eastern Asia, Africa, Madagascar, northernmost So ...

gardens, and formal lawns and fields that melt away into the Cherrystone Creek. On the grounds is also a walled garden from the 1800s, the Eyre family cemetery, and the ruins of an orangery from 1819. Since its origin, 12 generations of the Eyre family have owned the property, several attended the

College of William & Mary The College of William & Mary (abbreviated as W&M) is a public university, public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1693 under a royal charter issued by King William III of England, William III and Queen ...

and served as members of the

House of Burgesses The House of Burgesses () was the lower house of the Virginia General Assembly from 1619 to 1776. It existed during the colonial history of the United States in the Colony of Virginia in what was then British America. From 1642 to 1776, the Hou ...

. Currently, the estate is owned by H. Furlong Baldwin, a retired

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

bank executive and former chairman of

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

who is a descendant of Thomas Eyre.

Inventory

Severn and Margaret Eyre contributed to the consumer revolution of the 18th century, increasing the amount of luxury goods so the family could extend their capacity to engage in a refined manner. The inventory conducted in 1774 inventory mentions two turkey carpets, “Queens china,” “two neat fowling pieces silver mounted,” “1 Violin Bow and Case,” a library with over 300 volumes, and "1 large silver Punch Bowl,” which, valued at thirty pounds, was the most expensive single article of silver included in 1774. This is in all likelihood the supposed Morning Star punch bowl made in London by John Sutton in 1692; an uncommon survival of seventeenth-century residential silver with a Virginia provenance. Eyre family legend dictates that Morning Star, a family racehorse, swallowed champagne from the bowl in the wake of winning a race.

Interior

Eyre Hall renders a culmination of "architectural sophistication and regional preference." Littleton Eyre (1710-1768) may have wished to erect a structure with regards to the conventions of his neighbors yet of a scale that addressed his position and aspirations. Houses of wood outline development with gambrel rooftops were prominent locally and all through the Chesapeake, yet once in a while for the wealthiest of the upper class, who tended to work with brick. Ann and John Eyre, married in 1800, rolled out unobtrusive however stylish improvements to the house, including supplanting a straightforward bolection chimney shaping in the parlor with a neoclassical chimneypiece highlighting a cut urn and anthemions. To a late eighteenth-century story-and-a-half augmentation, they included an entire second story in 1807 and stretched out the entire to oblige a lounge area, storeroom, and servant's room. A "porch room" with a structural show pantry associated this wing to the first house. Mirroring the mid nineteenth-century enthusiasm for the sentimental and the fascinating, and also energy for herbal science and agriculture, the Eyres introduced French beautiful backdrop portraying Turkish scenes along the Bosphorus. The backdrop, which later ended up noticeably known as Rives du Bosphore, was planned before 1812 and publicized in the United States by 1817.

Exterior

The house as viewed from its drive is dominated by a large two story wood frame front section with a door on the far left and framed by a

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cu ...

. The bottom half is white

weatherboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding (construction), siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Cla ...

with the top covered with dark shingle. The large rectangular windows sit in a pair on each floor, with a window located above the entrance. A pair of large red brick chimneys pierce the roofline on the right. The next section is offset from the drive and is covered with white weatherboard from top to bottom. Another portico juts from the side of the front section and mirrors the front entrance. A small courtyard lies in front. A door is also located to the right of this back section and is framed by a window to either side with windows in direct line above. Large red brick chimneys pierce the roof in the center and on the far right. The entire house is set behind a white picket fence the runs its entire facade and perimeter. The dairy is located to the right of the house with the family cemetery and orangery ruins behind.Virginia is for Lovers
Eyre Hall Gardens.
Official Tourism Website of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 2018.

References

External links

Brief Description of Eyre HallEyre Hall, U.S. Route 13 & State Route 636 vicinity, Cheriton, Northampton County, VA
at the

Historic American Buildings Survey The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

(HABS)
Eyre Hall, Dairy, U.S. Route 13 & State Route 636 vicinity, Cheriton, Northampton County, VA
at HABS
Eyre Hall, Smokehouse, U.S. Route 13 & State Route 636 vicinity, Cheriton, Northampton County, VA
at HABS
Eyre Hall, Overseer's House, U.S. Route 13 & State Route 636, Cheriton, Northampton County, VA
at HABS
Eyre Hall, Graveyard, U.S. Route 13 & State Route 636 vicinity, Cheriton, Northampton County, VA
at HABS
Eyre Hall, Orangery (Ruins), U.S. Route 13 & State Route 636 vicinity, Cheriton, Northampton County, VA
at HABS
Oxford Tree-RIng Laboratory

{{National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Federal architecture in Virginia Houses in Northampton County, Virginia Plantation houses in Virginia Houses completed in 1796 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia National Historic Landmarks in Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Northampton County, Virginia Historic American Buildings Survey in Virginia 1796 establishments in Virginia