Romantic Tudor Mansions in the Deep South
by Eleanor S. Morris

> more romantic getaways in Virginia

If Elizabethan mansions catch your romantic imagination, two in Richmond, Virginia, might take your breath away. Both Agecroft Hall and Virginia House were constructed from ancient dwellings across the sea. Queen Elizabeth the First reigns over Agecroft Hall (or at least her portrait does) and the suits of armor in Virginia House take you right back to Medieval days. Both have been "imported" from their home in England and rebuilt amid stately gardens on Richmond land.

AGECROFT HALL

The story of Agecroft Hall begins about 500 years ago in Lancashire, England. The house was a built in a quadrangle with 20 rooms: kitchen, great hall, great parlor, dining parlor, bedchambers and a private chapel. When Sir Robert Langley, last of the male heirs, died in 1561, the property reverted to his daughter, married to a William Dauntesey. The property remained in the Dauntesey family until 1811. Then, for one reason or another, it became unoccupied from 1904 until 1925. Then it was put up for auction, and along came Thomas C. Williams, Jr. of all places--Richmond, Virginia, USA.

He wanted to build a true English manor house on his 23 acres overlooking the James River, and lo and behold, here was one ready-made! Agecroft was dismantled, crated, and transported across the ocean. However, the intention was not so much to replicate Agecroft as it had stood in Lancashire. Instead, Williams and his architect, Henry G. Morse, wanted to create a functional and comfortable house merely reminiscent of its former life. The reconstruction (with many 20th century conveniences added) took two years and cost $250,000. It was completed in 1928.

Unfortunately the following year Thomas Williams died, but in his will he stipulated that the property become a house museum. Opened to the public in 1969, the mansion's mission is to interpret life in an English manor house during the 16th and 17th centuries while early English colonists were struggling for survival on this very spot.

The main room of a house in medieval England was the Great Hall. Since the house has no armory, arms and armor are stored in the Hall, and there are all sorts of weapons, swords and spears and breastplates adorning the walls.

The rooms are furnished with antiques such as a 16th century inlaid gaming table and an original 1577 map of Lancashire by Christopher Saxon, a young Yorkshire surveyor who was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I to map the English counties. There are old books, like a collection of speeches and essays by James I (in one the monarch expresses his disapproval of the new "evil weed" (tobacco) from America.) Oh, you can get quite lost in the Tudor world here.

VIRGINIA HOUSE

Here's another Virginian who fell in love with a medieval English structure. Alexander Weddell and his wife, Virgina, put together Virginia House in the late 1920s, constructed from materials salvaged romn England's Warwick Priory. The priory dates from about 1119, some 50 years after William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings.

Built for the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, the monastery, with all the others, was dissolved by the order of Henry VIII, due to his disagreement with the Catholic Church, and Warwick Priory became a private dwelling for 400 years.

The grand residence was dismantled and shipped in numbered crates to Richmond's Windsor Farms, where it was reconstructed. It took several ships to carry the carved priory stones, quarried more than 800 years earlier. From 1925 to 1928 local masons and carpenters labored to put the pieces together. The weathered stone facade has stood now for more than 70 years on a hill overlooking the James River.

The imposing entry to Virginia House is the Great Hall, complete with paneling, tapestries, portraits and armor of the past. Again, fascinating antiques are everywhere. In the Sulgrave Bedroom, the bed dates from 1646; the three- legged chairs were designed to offer stability on uneven Tudor floors. A copy of the coat of arms, when this was still an English priory, of the priory's most famous guest, Queen Elizabeth I, is above the door.

As with Agecroft Hall, every room has its treasures, all certain to turn you back to the past, when Elizabeth I was queen and England ruled the waves. The home is named, not for the state of Virginia, but for Virginia Weddell, a scrapbook of the life she shared with the man she loved. After falling in love with each other in their middle years, they fell in love all over again, this time with the ancient stones, weathered timbers, leaded windows and massive oak doors. Both Virginia House and Agecroft Hall are the very stuff of romance.

GARDENS

Both Tudor homes have lovely gardens, suited to their historical times. Agecroft's formal sunken garden was inspired by Hampton Court Palace in England. Other formal gardens there include a knot garden and an Elizabethan herb garden.

The gardens of Virginia House offer Gothic archways and flagstone paths. There are many and various, a canal garden, a cloister garden, terraced and sunken gardens, a water garden, even a secret garden. European in design, with statuary imported from Florence, they offer magnificent vistas stretching down rolling lawns all the way to the James River below. The Garden Club of Virginia has an annual Historic Garden Week in Virginia, usually in April. (For information call 804-644-7776, www.VAGardenweek.org).