Agecroft Hall, Richmond VA
Agecroft Hall & Gardens museum is located on 23 acres overlooking the James River in the neighborhood of Windsor Farms in Richmond, Virginia. It’s a 15th century English Tudor manor house that was dismantled and brought to Richmond in 1926, featuring original 16th-century paneling, armor, period furniture, paintings and unique musical instruments. It has guided tours of the interior, plus self guided tours of the gardens, costumed living history events, lectures, and family-friendly events are scheduled year round, as well as the annual Richmond Shakespeare Festival June-July. The manor was originally located in the Irwell Valley at Agecroft, Pendlebury, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England, but by the 20th century it was unoccupied and left to rot.
Agecroft (meaning “field of wild celery”) was purchased by a wealthy local businessman, Thomas C. Williams Jr., who wanted an English manor house of his very own, because that’s a rich-person thing to do. The house was moved and restored at a cost of $250,000, roughly $4.63 million in today’s dollars, and then died a year later. The loss of Agecroft Hall provoked anger in England, and was even the subject of debate in the House of Commons, but that didn’t stop the wheels of rich-people progress, and it moved to America all the same! Probably just as well – the manor would have continued to fall apart, disappear and be completely forgotten. One thing about the passion projects of rich people, they are responsible for the restoration of otherwise long-forgotten properties, such as the case with Shelburne Museum and Fort Ticonderoga.
After his widow died the house was turned into a museum, which was stipulated in the will of the couple, as was the case with Hammond Castle. Lucky us, because the estate is a real gem!
It’s located in the quiet residential neighborhood of Windsor Farms. Funny enough, just around the corner is ANOTHER English manor relocated to Richmond, VA by another rich businessman, Alexander Wilbourne Weddell, in the 1920’s called The Virginia House. I don’t know if one is able to take tours of that particular estate, I only know that you can book expensive weddings there. I’m sure that will be subject of another photo outing in the future because the place is beautiful.
We had a day to ourselves and I wanted to do something cultural and take some pictures (then head over to Gwar Bar for dinner – expect an article about THAT place before too long!). The tour was brief, it began with a video that we watched with eight or nine other people in folding metal chairs, then we were ushered through a series of rooms by tour guides who told us all about the stuff we were looking at. The place reminded me of Hammond Castle on a smaller scale (the Williams’es were rich but I guess they just weren’t Hammond-rich!), the manor was late-Medieval English through and through, props and all! The tour took maybe 45 minutes, we had planned to do a self-tour of the gardens (at an additional cost, for some reason) but it started raining… pretty hard! We get some serious rainstorms around here. Sadly, we had to put off the garden tour for another time, however, we enjoyed the visit all the same. It was a perfect outing for when you want to do something nerdy and cultural but don’t want to spend half the day doing it!
