The mansion is set in a handsomely landscaped park which seems detached both geographically and temporally from the 20th century commercial development that surrounds it in Richmond's Northside. Among the early outbuildings is an architecturally noteworthy carriage house built in 1859 of the same bricks used in the construction of nearby Emmanuel church. The family cemetery is enclosed with a Gothic-style cast iron fence; the earliest stone dates to 1811. A slave cemetery also rests on the property. Brook Hill has remained in the same family since the early 18th century, and the lives of it's owners, the Williamsons, Stewarts and Bryans, have been closely interwoven with the history of Richmond and Henrico County over the past 200 years. During the course of the War Between the States, most of the leaders of the Confederacy were entertained here.
"Brook Hill, with its profusion of bays, verandas and eclectic ornamentation is a house unparalleled in Virginia. The house in its present form dates largely to the 1850's and "60s, being a curious blend of Gothic Revival and Italianate elements. The original 18th-century house is somewhere within the walls of the present structure, but there is no visible architectural evidence to confirm this tradition. The mid-19th-century interiors which are even more richly varied than the exterior of the house, remain largely intact....." Inventory of Early Architecture County of Henrico, Virginia, Compiled and edited with introduction by Christopher M Gregson. Also on this property is the Brook Road Tollhouse, probably the only surviving building of its type in central Virginia. The original toll keeper's house, a one story structure, was erected between 1825-40.
Below are pictures of the family cemetery:
Below are pictures of the slave cemetery:
- Privately owned
- (Photos supplied by Mr. Welford Lloyd Williams; Inventory of Early Architecture County of Henrico, Virginia)
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Fairfield Sites: Brook Hill
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