Hillsborough Ramble

Dating to 1785, Moorefields is a historic estate that combines judicial history with artistic landscape design. The property was built as a summer retreat for Judge Alfred Moore, a lifelong resident of the lower Cape Fear. Educated in Boston, Moore returned to North Carolina and was admitted to the bar in April 1775. On September 1 of that year, he became a captain in the First North Carolina Continental Regiment and fought at Moore’s Creek Bridge and later in the defense of Charleston, South Carolina. He later served as North Carolina attorney general and as a state representative, and he remains one of only two North Carolinians to have served on the U.S. Supreme Court. He married Susanne Elizabeth Eagles and had several children. He died at age 55, and his name lives on in Raleigh’s Moore Square, Moore County, and Governor Alfred Moore Scales. 

Moorefields House is a modest Federal tripartite frame house with a two-story, side-gabled central block, three bays wide, flanked by one-bay wings. Exterior features include molded weatherboards fastened with rosehead nails, a molded cornice, and a shed-roof porch. In 1949, Edward T. Draper-Savage, a relative of the Moore family by marriage, acquired the house and began its restoration. 

The Moorefields Gardens as they appear today are largely the work of Draper-Savage. An artist and French professor at UNC, he transformed the grounds into a sanctuary, creating intricate garden spaces that reflected his artistic vision. One of the landscape’s most distinctive features is the cemetery he created for his cats beside the historic Moore family burial ground. His work shaped the property into a carefully composed setting where formal gardens contrast with the surrounding woodlands. 

This two-story Quaker Plan house is among the village’s oldest buildings. In 1983, it was saved from demolition and moved to its current site from a location just south of the I-85 and Highway 86 interchange. Thought to date to about 1790, the house has little documented early history. The Eno Friends Meeting, established just north of Hillsborough in 1754, had only fourteen members by 1793, so further research may help clarify the house’s origins. By around 1839, the property belonged to Alexander Dickson and his wife, Elizabeth, both Orange County natives who married in 1833 and had twelve children. The Dicksons enslaved at least three African Americans to work their farm and, from the late 1840s until 1863, operated general stores, a grist mill, and a wool-carding mill known as Enoe Mountain Mills. The family worshiped at New Hope Presbyterian Church. In the 1860s, Dickson described himself as both a farmer and mechanic and advertised the Knuckle Washing Machine, Young’s Improved Smut Machine, and several improved plows he manufactured in Hillsborough. His obituary, published in the Alamance Gleaner in July 1884, called him “one of our best citizens” and praised his devotion to his family. 

The house’s age is suggested by its mortise-and-tenon heavy-timber frame and brick nogging between posts and studs. This two-story late Georgian house includes features uncommon in North Carolina’s central Piedmont, including beaded weatherboards and a Flemish-bond chimney. Inside, it follows a three-room Quaker Plan with a boxed staircase, wainscot, doors, and mantels. A one-story, side-gabled farm office once stood behind the Dickson House and was moved with it in 1983. It now serves as the offices of the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough. 

The Dickson House has been protected by Preservation North Carolina covenants since 1993. 

Set high on a hill facing the village and framed by ancient boxwoods and cedars, St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church is one of North Carolina’s earliest Gothic Revival churches. The congregation was organized in 1752, though its first sanctuary was not built until 1768. That colonial-era church stood at the corner of Tryon and Church Streets (where the present Presbyterian church now stands) and was destroyed by fire. After the Anglican parish was reorganized in 1820, the current sanctuary was completed in 1826. The congregation commissioned English-born architect William Nichols, local mason John Berry, and contractor Samuel Hancock to build it. 

For Hillsborough, Nichols designed a brick church with lancet stained-glass windows, recessed Gothic-arched panels, and a steep slate roof, giving it the character of an English country church. The square entrance tower was added in 1830, rebuilt in 1850, and topped with a tall spire in 1875. Stone and slate steps lead to the front entrance, while a buttressed brick wall along St. Mary’s Road encloses the churchyard. Inside, the church follows the traditional rectangular-chancel and western-tower plan, with white plaster walls set against dark paneling and a scissor-truss ceiling.

Built around 1910, the rectory is a one-and-a-half-story, side-gabled house. The full-width, shed-roofed porch is supported by Tuscan columns and was enlarged to wrap around the right, where it was enclosed with windows in 1993. A brick retaining wall extends along North Cameron Street and St. Mary’s Road and an original early twentieth-century picket fence with spear top motif surrounds rear of house. This lot was owned by numerous individuals from the late 18th century to 1869, when it was acquired by St. Matthews.

In the 1830 cemetery adjacent to the church, the earliest graves appear to be those of the Reverend William Mercer Green family, but members of the Cain family were also buried here in the 1830s. Other important individuals buried here include members of the Cameron, Graham, Ruffin, Kirkland, Webb, Roulhac, Jones, Collins, Hill, Curtis, Nash, Strudwick, and Waddell families. The obelisks, ledgers, statues, crosses, and simple stones of many different materials create a picturesque setting. At the far north of the graveyard, a circular path bordered by low granite walls provides a space for reflection or small gatherings. 

Inspired by rival Philadelphia architects John Notman and Samuel Sloan, this symmetrical, towered villa draws on designs published in Andrew Jackson Downing’s Cottage Residences (1842) and Samuel Sloan’s The Model Architect (1852). Related designs influenced at least three North Carolina houses: architect-builder Jacob Holt’s own house in Warrenton (1856), Judge Robert P. Dick’s house in Greensboro by Philadelphia architect William S. Andrews (1858), and Hillsborough’s BelleVue (1855). While its striking elevation builds on North Carolina’s tradition of Federal-era tripartite houses, BelleVue gives that form a later Romantic-era interpretation. 

Historians believe Samuel Chinny bought the property in 1799 and likely built the earliest portion of the house, later incorporated into the present structure. That first-phase dwelling contained three large rooms and a hall on the first floor, with two bedrooms above. Saddler James Phillips lived here from 1807 to 1847, and his name is scratched into a window in the nearby kitchen building. In 1853, Thomas Blount Hill Jr. sold his ancestral tripartite house, The Hermitage, near Halifax, then bought this house and its five acres from the Phillips estate. He renamed it BelleVue and moved there with his wife, Maria, and their family. In November 1855, the Hillsborough Recorder reported that “a new house in the most modern fancy style, is being built by Mr. Hill.” Hill also invested in the Hillsborough Savings Institution and held interests in the North Carolina Railroad. After his death in 1888, the house passed to his daughter, Mary Alice Hill Webb, and by 1931 to her son, Joseph Cheshire Webb Jr., and his wife. 

The house largely reflects the Hill family’s 1855–1856 building campaign. Set at Hillsborough’s eastern edge behind a lawn and a grove of old trees, this Italianate villa was built around an earlier house, following a practical pattern seen in many North Carolina landmarks. Its façade features a three-story, pyramidal-roofed tower flanked by two-story, front-gabled wings. The main entrance, centered in the tower, is framed by sidelights and a transom and sheltered by a broad wraparound porch supported by Corinthian columns. 

On BelleVue’s east side stands one of Hillsborough’s earliest surviving brick structures and one of its finest early kitchens. James Phillips built it around 1807 after purchasing the “School-house lot,” and his name remains scratched into one of the windows. The two-room brick kitchen has a chimney ten feet wide at the base, with a built-in oven and an arched fireplace. Traces of brick foundations to the north may mark housing for enslaved workers. 

This house is situated on the foundations of an older house purchased in 1824 by Priestly Hinton Mangum, State Attorney General. The purchase is recorded in a letter to his brother, Senator Willie Person Mangum, from John Chavis, their revered free black tutor, as a “trifling property” destined to keep its owner “stretched like a bow string.” 

The house was purchased in 1856 by a member of the Cain family, who constructed the outbuildings on an old roadbed. Thomas Ruffin, Jr. and his wife Mary Clack Cain moved into the house shortly after the death of his father, longtime North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin Sr., in 1870. Governor Tod Robinson Caldwell, Ruffin Jr.’s brother-in-law, died in the house in 1875, two days after he suspected he drank bad water in Durham. Ruffin Jr. served on the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1881 to 1883. 

In 1886, the Orange County Observer reported: “On Saturday, Feb. 20th, about 4 p.m. the residence of Judge Thomas Ruffin was destroyed by fire. The fire had made such rapid progress, when first discovered, that it was useless to attempt to do anything but save as much as possible from the building, and everybody went to work, and we never saw people, white and black, work more faithfully and earnestly. A great deal of furniture, clothing, &c., was saved, and by hard work and the assistance of the heavy wind which was blowing at the time from the northwest, all of the outhouses were saved. The fire is supposed to have been caused by a defective flue. The loss is estimated at $5,000; no insurance. Judge Ruffin was absent attending court at Greensboro.”  

Months later, the Orange County Observer reported on August 21, 1886, that “Judge Ruffin has given the contract to White Bros., of Mebane, [later founders of White Furniture] to build him a dwelling house on the ground where his residence was destroyed by fire last winter.” On December 11, 1886, the Orange County Observer reported that “The contractors, Messrs. White Brothers, hope to be able to complete Judge Ruffin’s handsome residence by Jan. 1st.” The White Brothers built a traditional Triple-A house, with two side gables and a central gable, embellished with segmental-arched windows with peaked hoods, bracketed eaves, quatrefoil sawn vents in the gables, and chamfered porch posts with brackets.

After Thomas Ruffin, Jr.’s death in 1889, Mary Ruffin continued to live in the house.  After her death in 1908, it was maintained as a summer home by their daughter, Mary Ruffin Hill Thomas, and her second husband, U.S. Congressman Charles R. Thomas of New Bern. In 1914, the property was conveyed to A. S. and Carrie Lee Mitchell, who subdivided the land. In 1965, the house and 2.96 acres were conveyed to Col. and Mrs. Jacob Moon. In 1975 it was purchased by Arthur and Jacksie Plambeck (who grew up two houses away) and has remained in that family ever since. Following renovations in 2024, the house was renamed Clarendon Cross, both for the historical connections with an original proprietor of Carolina, and for the neighborhood where the current owners lived in London. 

Ralph Adams Cram, the influential and prolific New England architect, designed the Susan and Shepperd Strudwick Sr. House as a fitting addition to Hillsborough’s Churton Street. Cram, the brother-in-law of Mrs. Strudwick, designed the Neoclassical Revival-style house as a recreation of southern charm. It was built around 1908 on the site of the 1833 W. J. Bingham House, which was moved down East Union Street. In the 1970s, preservationists Barbara and John Kennedy acquired the house and gave it the name “Tamarind.”

In a 1973 interview published in the Daily Times-News, Shepperd Strudwick Jr. recalled that the family home was “famous because of its architectural proportions … and considered a fine example of Georgian architecture.” He also described Cram as “America’s most famous Gothic architect … whose second love was the Georgian style.” Cram also received commissions for St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Durham (1907), Trinity Episcopal Church in Asheville (1912–13), and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem (1928–29). By October 7, 1903, the News and Observer reported from Hillsborough that “Among the improvements going on here Mr. Shepperd Strudwick is having erected a very handsome residence on Churton Street.” 

Shepperd Strudwick founded the Bellevue Manufacturing Company, built about 1909 along the Southern Railway just west of Hillsborough. The two-story, side-gabled brick building is a typical example of slow-burn mill construction. It was the town’s second textile mill, joining the Eno Cotton Mill, built in 1896 and still standing. Together, the mills and nearby worker housing formed what became known as West Hillsborough and marked an important industrial chapter in this county-seat town. 

Set on a broad lawn overlooking Churton Street, this site is one of North Carolina’s earliest schools for girls, the Burwell Academy for Young Ladies. The two-acre property includes the Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell House, the school’s two-room brick classroom building, and a small brick necessary house. Together, these buildings reflect the history of Presbyterianism, women’s education, and the craftsmanship of brick mason John Berry. 

Built in 1821 as a hall-and-parlor house for local tavern keeper and businessman William Adams, the building was later purchased by Hillsborough Presbyterian Church for use as its manse. Rev. Robert Armistead Burwell moved there in 1836 with his wife, Margaret “Anna” Robertson Burwell, their twelve children, and several enslaved household members. Home-schooled by her Aunt Bott, Anna Burwell so impressed a local doctor that he asked her to educate his daughter, leading to the founding of the school in 1837. Over the next two decades, the Burwell Academy educated more than 200 young women. 

From 1835 to 1841, enslaved seamstress Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly endured severe physical abuse from the Burwells, and sexual abuse by Alexander Kirkland of Ayr Mount who fathered her son only son, George. Despite these circumstances, she used her sewing skills to purchase her freedom and later became a successful dressmaker and businesswoman in Washington, DC, as well as a trusted confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. 

In 1848, the Burwells bought the house from the church and hired John Berry to add the large north living room and the bedroom above it. These changes gave the house its current form: a five-bay, hip-roofed dwelling with plain weatherboards over most of the exterior, molded weatherboards on the rear (west) elevation, and flush sheathing beneath the porch roof. The centered double-leaf front door is framed by sidelights and a transom. Interior details reflect the influence of John Berry’s architectural library, including Owen Biddle’s Young Carpenter’s Assistant and Asher Benjamin’s The Practical House Carpenter and Practice of Architecture. 

In 1857, the Burwells closed the school and moved to Charlotte, where they founded a school that later became Queen’s College. Dr. J. S. Spurgeon bought the house in 1895, and his family hired Jules Korner of Kernersville to add fashionable Victorian features. In 1965, the Spurgeon heirs sold the property to the Historic Hillsborough Commission for use as a welcome center. Today, the site operates as a museum dedicated to telling the complete and full history of its inhabitants. 

One of Hillsborough’s three tripartite houses, Pilgrim’s Rest joins Moorefields and Ayr Mount as an example of a distinctive three-part house form inspired by the work of Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio. The house was built around 1820 for Eliza Garden Tart Hasell of Charleston and Wilmington, granddaughter of botanist Dr. Alexander Garden (for whom the gardenia is named). In 1829, Samuel Simpson of New Bern bought it for his daughter Mary and her husband, Henry Kollock Nash. After their deaths in 1897, their unmarried daughter, Miss Annie Nash, owned the property until 1919. Lieutenant Governor A. H. Graham later lived here after his home, Montrose, burned. Dr. H. W. Moore subsequently restored the house with help from Durham architect Archie Royal Davis, who added the rear wings around 1943. 

Unlike Moorefields, Ayr Mount, and related houses in the Roanoke River basin, the Hasell-Nash House is distinguished by its three pedimented front-gabled sections. Although more than twenty-five houses are part of this important group, this dramatic roofline may be unique. Scholars have suggested that English-born architect William Nichols may have designed the house, citing features such as classical porch, Gothic-arched pediment windows and vents, and louvered blinds. A one-story side-gabled wing was added at the right rear in 1998. 

In a 2014 New York Times article, collectors Steven Burke and Randy Campbell described their remarkable collection of more than 1,200 handmade American folk-art buildings displayed at their home in Hillsborough. The miniature structures—ranging from churches, theaters, storefronts, and Ferris wheels to detailed Victorian homes—date primarily from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and were created by largely unknown makers. Burke argues these decorative objects represent an overlooked category of American folk art, reflecting both architectural history and personal creativity, though their lack of documented provenance has kept them from attracting widespread collector interest. Over nearly three decades, the pair assembled the collection through auctions, antique markets, and online purchases, often at surprisingly modest prices. While much remains unknown about who built the pieces and why, Burke and Campbell have devoted themselves to researching their origins, viewing the collection as a fascinating window into American craftsmanship, imagination, and everyday life. If you love architecture, you will likely find this a fascinating lens in which to view representations of buildings that are frozen in time, with sometimes fleeting paint colors, materials, and details as they once were. 

As the state architect, William Nichols was designing the Governor’s Mansion in Raleigh and Gerrard Hall at Chapel Hill, at the same time he composed plans for the Eagle Lodge in Hillsborough. Though Nichols was previously a Freemason in Edenton, he was expelled from the group and likely gained this commission through the proximity of his work in Chapel Hill. Nichols worked in partnership with the famed team of brick mason and builder John Berry and Samuel Hancock. This talented trio created an intriguing Greek Revival-style building.  

Built in 1823, the Lodge is a 40-foot cube that was originally embellished with an Ionic portico entry and a glassed-observatory structure on the roof. The observatory added height and interest to the otherwise austere building. It was removed from the roof in 1862, and the current hipped roof was built. The Flemish-bond brick is three bays wide and three bays deep with windows protected by louvered wood shutters.  

Chartered in 1791, Eagle Lodge No. 19 was dormant by 1799 but was revived as No. 71 in 1819. In the mid-1800s, the building served as a town meeting place known as the King Street Opera House, a dual identity recorded on an 1888 Sanborn map. The lodge reinstated its original number 19 in 1932, and the Eagle Lodge still owns and uses the historic hall today. 

In November 1838, Isaiah H. Spencer placed an advertisement in The North Carolina Standard announcing the opening of the Orange Hotel in Hillsborough: “The subscriber would respectfully inform the public, that this large and commodious establishment, situated on the street leading directly west from the Court-House, is now open for the reception of travellers and regular boarders. Having erected this building especially for a HOTEL, no expense or pains will be spared to give it character abroad; his customers may therefore rest assured that his accommodations will be good.” 

Known locally as Spencer’s Tavern but advertised as the Orange Hotel, the inn kept the “Orange” name for fifty years. It was later known as the Occoneechee Hotel (1888–1908), the Corbinton Inn (1908–1946), and, since 1946, the Colonial Inn, the name by which it is best known today. The landmark is closely associated with Hillsborough’s tradition of hospitality. Its menu of broiled chicken, baked ham, roasted lamb, candied sweet potatoes, and giblets on toast made it a favorite of judges and circuit lawyers during recesses from the nearby courthouse. 

Richison Nichols, who bought the inn from Spencer in 1888, is credited with building its trademark two-story piazza, with distinctive sawn balusters extending over the West King Street sidewalk. The main entrance features a double-leaf two-panel door with sidelights and a segmental-arched transom. A two-story rear gabled wing dates to at least 1888, and around 1900 the building was remodeled with segmental-arched windows, peaked hoods, and bracketed eaves. After standing vacant for decades, the Colonial Inn was thoroughly restored and reopened as a boutique hotel in 2020. 

One of North Carolina’s most distinguished early landmarks, this brick temple-form Greek Revival courthouse, built in 1845, is a defining work of local brick mason and builder John Berry. A prominent self-taught builder and state senator, Berry partnered with Samuel Hancock on numerous residential, civic, and religious projects across the Piedmont. He was known for his skill in bricklaying and his use of architectural pattern books such as Owen Biddle’s Young Carpenter’s Assistant and Asher Benjamin’s Practical House Carpenter. 

The two-story façade features a full portico with a classical pediment and entablature supported by four fluted Doric columns. Original details remain remarkably intact, including Flemish-bond brick walls, twelve-over-twelve wood-sash windows with jack arches, keystones, and stone sills, as well as a central double-leaf door with a fanlight, brick voussoirs, and keystone. The original domed cupola clock tower still sits atop the building. 

The Orange County Courthouse reflects Berry’s command of classical, pattern-book design, likely shaped in part by his work on the North Carolina State Capitol, which may have influenced its bold Doric order. His understanding of classical detail drew on publications by Asher Benjamin, Minard Lafever, and Owen Biddle. When the building was completed, the editor of the Hillsborough Recorder wrote on March 4, 1846, that this fourth courthouse on the square was “not surpassed by any courthouse in the state and perhaps not surpassed in the Union,” adding that it was a source of pride that it had been erected by a “native son.” When a new courthouse was built nearby in 1953, this historic landmark was preserved as a museum. 

Largely obscured by trees, this I-house has plain weatherboards and two-over-two wood-sash windows with arched upper sashes in arched wood surrounds. It has a wide cornice, sawn bargeboards in the gables, and a standing-seam metal roof. The two-light-over-two-panel door is centered on the façade and has a bracketed surround. There is a two-story, gabled ell at the left rear (southeast) with a one-story section that wraps around the rear and right (west) sides of the ell. An entrance on the left (east) side of the ell is sheltered by a shed-roofed porch on chamfered posts. A one-story, shed-roofed wing on the right elevation has a twelve-light-over-one-panel door and a two-over-two arched windows. 

Sanborn maps date the house between 1905-1911, and a February 1909 newspaper article makes note of Justin and Ed Brown constructing two cottages on Margaret Lane, south of Corbinton Inn. We presume these two cottages to be 153 and 163 W. Margaret Lane. The Brown Family continued to reside in and own the house for a number of decades, and it eventually left family ownership in July 1973 upon the death of Mrs. Hattie V. Brown Lloyd. Mrs. Lloyd, a former manager of a dry goods retail store, is first associated with the house on the 1910 census with her widowed mother, Julia Brown, and her siblings. At the time of Mrs. Lloyd’s death, her sister, Mamie Brown Ray, was still living on W. Margaret Lane, directly across the street at 144 W. Margaret Lane. Mrs. Ray would continue to reside there until her death in 1982.

The Occaneechi Indian Village is a carefully researched reconstruction that interprets the heritage of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. It is based on the protected seventeenth-century Fredricks Site along the Eno River. Archaeological excavations in the 1980s uncovered a small, densely settled community that flourished from about 1680 to 1710, offering valuable evidence of Occaneechi life during the early period of contact with Europeans. 

Visitors first encounter the cedar palisade, or defensive stockade, which once protected the community during the unsettled era of the deerskin trade. Inside are several atasi, or traditional permanent dwellings, built with sapling frames and bark coverings to reflect the homes that once stood here. At the center of the village are a communal fire pit and a work arbor, where activities such as stone-tool making and pottery production would have shaped daily life. 

One of the most important discoveries at the original site was a central sweat lodge, used for both physical cleansing and spiritual practice. Archaeological evidence also shows that the village was an important trading hub on the Great Trading Path, where the Occaneechi exchanged deerskins and furs for European goods such as glass beads, metal knives, and brass kettles. Today, the reconstructed village serves as a living bridge to the past, helping visitors understand both traditional building practices and the enduring presence of the Occaneechi people.

The Burnside Coachman’s Quarters is one of a complex of buildings constructed between 1820 and 1850 that were part of the Ruffin and Cameron Family plantation, known as Burnside. On this tour, the one-story brick Coachman’s Quarters is open for us to see. This was likely the home of Jesse Ruffin, an enslaved coachman for Thomas and Ann Ruffin. Jesse was born in 1806 and died in 1901! He was roughly 60 years old at the time of emancipation and continued to work as a gardener. In September 1886, Ruffin was referenced in the Orange County Observer as “trained by the late Judge Ruffin as a gardener, and who is particularly expert in saving garden and other seeds.” By that time, he lived in his own house on the Durham Road. In October 1889 “Uncle Jesse Ruffin” was again noted in the Observer for having “brought us the first pear last week that we have seen this year. He said it weighed 20 ounces.”  

The building had fallen into ruin and had lost both its roof and chimney stack before a careful restoration initiative, completed in 2011. The project received a Carraway Award from Preservation North Carolina. The restoration demonstrates the reinvestment potential of accessory dwellings and reflects the broader preservation movement supported by the federal rehabilitation tax credit program.

The Burnside Coachman’s Quarters and Barn (not on tour) were protected by an easement donated to Preservation North Carolina in April 2026. 

Ayr Mount, built in 1815 just east of Hillsborough on the road to Oxford and Virginia, is a finely crafted Federal-style tripartite house. Brick mason William Collier worked on its construction. Notable exterior features include Flemish-bond brickwork, windows with molded surrounds and jack arches, and flush eaves with a dentil cornice. The jack arches highlight the masons’ skill: each brick was hand-rubbed on abrasive stones to create the tapered shape needed for the splayed effect. The double-leaf entrance, topped by a transom, is sheltered by a portico supported by slender square posts. While the exterior is restrained, the interior is more elaborate, with inventive mantels and overmantels; the arcaded crown moldings attributed to joiner Elhannon Nutt; and a staircase and high wainscoting credited to John Joyner Briggs. 

The house was built for William Kirkland, who named it for his home in Ayr, Scotland. He arrived in North Carolina between 1780 and 1790 and opened a Churton Street store that sold both general merchandise and luxury goods. His success, tied in part to the slave economy, enabled him to build Ayr Mount for his wife, Margaret, and their fourteen children. Kirkland became active in local life, serving on the board of the Hillsborough Academy and participating in horse racing. He also enslaved at least twenty Black people who carried out household and business labor. The fifty-acre property remained in the family until 1985, when Richard H. Jenrette acquired it, restored the house, and later donated it to the Classical American Homes Preservation Trust. None of the original outbuildings—including a kitchen-quarter, smokehouse, dairy, well, and barn—survive.

Preservation North Carolina supported Ayr Mount’s preservation, managing the site for Classical American Homes Preservation Trust for eighteen years. During that time, the partners were able to acquire extensive additional land along the Eno River, including the site of the Occoneechee Speedway, an early NASCAR dirt track. Sited across the river, the speedway itself is now listed on the National Register. This additional land helped save the exquisite scenic setting of Ayr Mount from the construction of a four-lane highway.