Castle Hill

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Exterior view of Castle Hill. Reproduced from Wikimedia.

Castle Hill is an 18th century structure in Albemarle County listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register. It was listed on the VLR on November 16, 1971 and the National Register of Historic Places on February 23, 1972. [1]

Henry Martin's first wife Martha Bullock was originally a slave laboring at the Castle Hill estate; the couple would have nine children together.

Narrative from Virginia Landmarks Registry

"The earliest portion of this two-part house is a traditional colonial Virginia frame dwelling, built in 1764 by Dr. Thomas Walker, a colonial leader and explorer of the west. Here in 1781 Walker’s wife delayed the British colonel Banastre Tarleton to give the patriot Jack Jouett time to warn Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislators of Tarleton’s plan to capture them. The stately brick portion, an example of Jeffersonian classicism by master builder John M. Perry, was erected in 1823-1824 for William Cabell Rives, minister to France, U.S. senator, and Confederate congressman. Columned conservatories were added in 1844 by William B. Phillips. Rives’s granddaughter Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy, wife of the Russian painter Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, was a novelist and playwright. She and her husband made Castle Hill their home in the early decades of this century. Castle Hill is noted for its extensive gardens and landscaped grounds."

Castle Hill came into the possession of the Rives Family in 1819 when William Cabel Rives (1793-1868) married Judith Page Walker, a granddaughter of Dr. Thomas Walker, and heiress of Castle Hill. Several years after their marriage the couple added the large brick portion to Dr. Walker's frame house. A prominent lawyer, William Cabel Rives served twice as minister to France, and also served in the United States Senate and in the Confederate Congress. Rives also was the author of biographies of James Madison and John Hampden. Rives's wife, Judith, was an authoress of several novels. In her second book, Home and the World (1857) she gives a vivid picture of ante-bellum Castle Hill and the life there through her descriptions of the fictional "Avonmore".


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References

  1. Web. 002-0012 Castle Hill, Virginia Landmarks Register, April 4, 2018, retrieved January 18, 2020.

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