It’s arduous to contemplate {{that a}} residence constructed sooner than America was even a country would nonetheless be standing, to not point out up available on the market. Nevertheless that’s true of a correct manor house, a cultural and architectural time capsule, that was in-built 1755 on farmland alongside the Potomac River in Maryland.
Mulberry Fields in Leonardtown consists of so much additional than merely the manor house. There are higher than a dozen quarters, cottages and barns on the property (some historic, some added) on what was a flourishing plantation inside the 18th century. Along with the buildings, the property sits on 500 acres with a stately allee of cedar timber on the south aspect that end in a mile of white-sand seaside on the river.
The manor house and property have remained inside the fingers of the current householders’ family for higher than a century. The asking worth is $30 million.
Mulberry Fields holds the one remaining Georgian-style residence in “an area which as quickly as boasted a lot of such buildings,” in response to the Nationwide Register of Historic Areas. The earlier plantation joined the historic register in 1973.
Exterior, a driveway lined with timber leads to the house, which has an Annapolis-style facade. Nevertheless it’s the riverfront entrance on the south aspect that claims basically probably the most consideration: a giant coronary heart door with two large house home windows in any respect sides (in earlier situations, chances are you’ll arrive by boat). Spherical 1820, an elaborate two-story portico with prolonged Doric columns was added.
Inside, plenty of the distinctive woodwork, moldings and mantels keep intact. As an illustration, partitions of rectangular raised panels stretch to the ceiling inside the good room and consuming room on the first flooring.
There are three bedrooms on the second flooring and three that make up the entire third flooring. Fashionable additions embrace a kitchen, 4 full loos and one half-bath, and air-conditioning.
The house is flanked by two stand-alone interval buildings: the kitchen, which has been reworked as a customer cottage, and the weaving house, which retains its distinctive clapboard partition partitions, flooring, doorways and {{hardware}}. Every have peaked roofs and brick facades. These “dependencies,” or outbuildings, as quickly as housed enslaved people who served as cooks, regular fingers, servants and housekeepers.
Totally different buildings on the property embrace a dairy, smokehouse, carriage house, yard/instrument shed, a lot of animal and instruments barns, one in every of which has been reworked, farmhouse and former dwelling.
It’s not arduous to consider a up to date lifestyle on the land, one with bonfires on the riverfront seaside, walks inside the fields and woods, and entertaining inside the historic grand room.
The house was constructed by John Attaway Clarke and finally handed to his nephew, William Somerville, who had a labor drive of enslaved people who labored inside the fields to cultivate corn, wheat, flax and cotton inside the early 1800s. The property finally went to his son, William Clarke Somerville, the home’s most notable proprietor, who distinguished himself whereas serving as a U.S. Navy fundamental inside the Battle of 1812.
Somerville toured Europe and rubbed shoulders with the poet Lord Byron, Britain’s famed Duke of Wellington and the Marquis de Lafayette, who fought in America’s wrestle of independence as a youthful man. He obtained a diplomatic appointment in Greece by then President John Quincy Adams nevertheless died en route at Lafayette’s residence.
The property went by way of a lot of fingers sooner than passing to the current householders, who possess architectural plans and approvals that allow for transforming the kitchen and bathrooms along with the addition of a model new wing on the west aspect of the home.
Current leases on the placement produce an earnings of $70,000. The property has home for as many as 12 rental gadgets. Income can be derived from farming and the U.S. Navy, which maintains a navigation signal on the river.
By means of patrons, the home house owners are hoping the property will go to someone who will defend the historic gem. “The home house owners and their households for generations have been very instrumental in sustaining the historic previous of it and by no means destroying it with renovations proper right here and there,” says itemizing agent Kornelia Stuphan of Prolonged & Foster Precise Property. “We would love for it to be preserved. We’re hoping for a historic perception or foundation.” Whoever winds up purchasing for Mulberry Fields can have purchased a unusual piece of American historic previous.
Mulberry Fields is located at 19700 Mulberry Fields Avenue in Leonardtown, Maryland.