James River Plantations

This week I'm touring for two, as my Mother is in town. She is a long-time lover of plantation tours and so we spent the week looking around Williamsburg and visiting plantations on the James River. After studying up on www.jamesriverplantations.org/ we chose to visit Shirley and Berkeley.

To get to the plantations, you take 5 out of Richmond. I was immediately amazed by how quickly Richmond disappeared and we were driving through beautiful countryside. I've never thought of Richmond as a huge city, but there do seem to be endless strip malls in most directions. It was both refreshing and reassuring to find that the countryside - or at least something close to it - was only ten minutes away.

After driving down 5 for 30 minutes or so, the roadside becomes peppered with homemade-looking signs advertising the plantations. Berkeley, according to the signs, is the "most historic," while Shirley is "America's oldest family business." We chose to stop in at Shirley first since we had heard that it retained a lot of its original interior design and outbuildings.

To get to Shirley, you drive down a mile or more of long, groomed gravel roads lined with fields of corn and soy. The plantation is a study in organization, with freshly mowed grass, strategically placed trees and a ground plan that is almost perfectly symmetrical. In it's long history, the plantation has survived the Indian Rebellion, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Great Depression. The husband and wife who currently own Shirley live on the second floor, while their son lives on the third. Other than the gorgeous view, the most interesting thing about Shirley is the flying staircase, which is truly an architectural marvel. The flying staircase is built in a way that makes it look like there is nothing supporting it from below and like it shouldn't be able to support any serious weight. Our tour guide thought that it might be the only surviving example of such a staircase in the U.S. When we expressed curiosity about how it was built, he said that for a long time, no one was quite sure. Eventually, portions of the staircase were torn out to solve the mystery, and it was found that huge cast iron rods run through the entire thing, and are attached to the walls on either side.

After taking the tour of Shirley and walking around the outbuildings, we got back in the car and drove to Berkeley. Only five minutes away on the same road, Berkeley has an entirely different look and feel. Where Shirley is completely organised and geometrical, Berkeley feels almost like a plantation gone wild. Berkeley has had a much more eventful history than Shirley - trading ownership many times and not faring quite as well in war times - and so it has lost much of its authenticity. Eleven outbuildings are missing from the grounds, but the gardens are still in perfect condition. We walked from the house down to the water through terraced gardens and huge old trees, and I remembered how much I love being on the water. Berkeley is on a beautiful stretch of land on the river, and the plantation truly takes advantage of the view.