Bruce Roberts takes us on a photographic tour of fourteen of the famous colonial Virginia Plantation houses nestled along the shores of the Lower James River from Richmond east to Jamestown and Williamsburg.
Today many of the Plantation Homes have been designated state and national historic sites, and with this book you can visit them and relive four hundred years of history..
At Carter\'s Grove, Roberts photographed the "Refusal Room," where, according to local history, both Washington and Jefferson were refused in marriage by Virginia belles.
In the dining room at Berkeley Hundred, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and eight other presidents enjoyed meals and discussed affairs of state.
While the plantations share some common history, each reflects the individual characteristics of the men, women, and children who lived there.
The text provides histories of the plantations, presenting them as places where real people lived and worked -- and still do, in many cases.
The plantations portrayed include Shirley Plantation, one of the oldest in America
Belle Air Plantation, with its unique seventeenth-century frame house containing America\'s finest Jacobean staircase; and Westover Plantation, site of the elegant Georgian home built by William Byrd II.
Robert\'s 141 color photographs capture the magnificent exteriors of the houses, as well as their gardens and grounds, and offer rare and intimate glimpses of their interiors and furnishings.
If you have, you will find this book a wonderful memento of a special place.
If you have never visited the James River plantations, this book will inspire you to plan a trip there.
Now carefully restored, often with the original furnishings, these houses are glorious monuments to a bygone era.
Bruce Roberts takes us on a photographic tour of fourteen of the famous colonial Virginia Plantation houses nestled along the shores of the Lower James River from Richmond east to Jamestown and Williamsburg
