Edenton Pilgrimage

Today we drove to Edenton to enjoy the Pilgrimage of Homes, sponsored by the Edenton Woman's Club.  Every other year, the Women's Club, in cooperation with other civic organizations, sponsors either "Easels in the Gardens" (which we attended last year) or this tour of some of the many historic homes in this beautiful city - "The South's Prettiest Small Town."  It is indeed a beautiful Town, and we have enjoyed stopping here many times on our way to or from Duck, or on a separate trip to a special event as we did today.

The Pilgrimage began at the Cupola House, ca. 1758, where we have often enjoyed the gardens outside but never seen the interior of the Jacobian-style house and its octagonal cupola.  We had a picnic lunch under the arbor in the garden; there are some good restaurants here, particularly 309 Bistro right across the street, but we knew Edenton would be filled with visitors because of this event and we wanted to eat plain home-made tuna sandwiches and pasta salad two days before a half marathon.

Everything was in bloom in this garden - dogwoods, irises - just beautiful!  Last year I remember listening to a quartet of musicians playing baroque music in this same arbor.

The house is a landmark in Edenton and very well known; a group of local citizens formed the Cupola House Association to purchase and protect the old house, and that was the beginning of much of the passionate interest in historic preservation here.

Docents dressed in period clothing met us at the door of all of these homes, and one of them led us inside the Cupola House, once occupied by Dr. Samuel Dickinson.  We did not linger long at the display of his surgical instruments, including the amputation saw.  Up the narrow staircase we walked, this tall Roadrunner ducking low.  In the upstairs bedroom was a crib by the mother's bed and an adjoining children's room where three children were raised.  One of the little girls died.  "And of course," our docent said, "There is a ghost here."  Apparently the little bed is made up every night and the sheets pulled tight, but in the morning the corner is wrinkled as if someone has tried to climb back in bed.

Across the street was Edenton Bay Trading Company, and we relaxed for a while in the walled-in brick courtyard out back before beginning the Pilgrimage in earnest.

It was a short stroll down East King Street to the Howard B. Chappell House, ca. 1911, with its broad steps.   We wandered through large, high-ceilinged rooms, nice and cool in the summer but, one of the docents told us, cold in the winter - thus the fireplace in every room.

Next down the street was the beautiful Haywood C. Privott House, ca. 1900, three-stories in a Queen Anne Style with towers, domed front porches, and arched doorways.  Privott built the house using some of the 20,000 bricks left over from the Edenton Cotton Mill (at the end of the street).

I asked the owner if I could play the piano in the parlor, and she readily agreed, so I played a few bars of the Prelude in C from the Well-Tempered Clavier.

In one of the back rooms, we saw this sign over the mantle, under a painting of the family's plantation miles away from here where the motto was also featured:  "We ain't mad with nobody."  And so I hope that this pacifism caused it to be spared from destruction by the Union Army during the Civil War. 

These transom windows all opened and could be finely adjusted, and I examined with interest and great respect the clever handle that opened it and kept it in place (on the left).

And this lovely tiled planter was just outside the back door, whether original or a later addition nobody seemed to know.  These homes have been renovated many times between the 18th and 19th centuries and today.

We saw these unusual white wisteria next door, and I remembered that I had written a poem about them last year.

And the white Wisteria, floribunda Alba,

Which grows in Monet's garden in Giverny,

Spills over the sidewalk onto East King Street

As it does over that luminous Japanese bridge.

Farther on King Street we toured the James Coffield House, ca. 1764, filled with antique furniture, and this wonderful little kitchen with copper pans hanging on a chain from the ceiling.

The Hollowell House, ca. 1897, had been moved from another location in the 1970s.  Family antiques abounded inside.

This huge Japanese mural took up an entire wall; similar murals, the owner said, are in a house owned by a brother in the family, and in Kyoto, Japan.

At the end of King Street was the Cotton Mill, built in 1898 to manufacture "ring-spun thread" (according to our brochure).  The Mill was converted into condominiums in 1995 in a tasteful layout of two-story units using the original wooden floors. 

One of the original buildings has been preserved as the Edenton Cotton Mill Museum of History, complete with a scale model of the mill and its surrounding area.

Walking back down Queen Street, we noticed many homes in identical architectural form, some of the 70 homes constructed here from 1899 to 1923 - a community of Mill Workers, thriving here under the spreading live oak trees and crepe myrtles.

On 304 Queen Street stands one of these homes, the Lane House, which historians believe is the oldest house in North Carolina, ca. 1718.  Linda and Steve Lane were renovating the property when a local contractor noticed several unusual features in the buildings; the inside of the house was stripped to its bare beams and columns, shag carpet was removed, and the strong original bones of a 1718 house was revealed.

The next house on Queen Street was a little bungalow that dates to 1790, the Wheeler House.  A simple structure, it has been lovingly restored by many owners.  "Each Edenton family who has lived here has added their own style and choices," the brochure says.

Our docent drew attention to the picture-holders in most of the rooms which were attached to the wall because pictures cannot easily be hung on a plaster wall.

Four different kinds of nails had been discovered in the house, and were lovingly displayed in one of the rooms.

We had completed a large circle back to Broad Street and St. Paul's Episcopal Church, ca. 1736.  It is the second oldest church in North Carolina.  A remarkable event occured here in 1947; serious issues were discovered in the structure, and all of the interior furnishings and details were removed to execute the repairs.  A fire in 1940 destroyed all but the brick walls, but the furnishings had been stored in a safe place and were re-installed to its early 1800s state.

After St. Paul's, Martha said she wanted to explore some of the shops on Broad Street in downtown Edenton.  So I continued on to the few houses on the west side of Town.  The Bond McMullen House, ca. 1860, was next down Church Street; the original entrance had been changed to the adjoining street and the big columns set out front in the Colonial Revival design popular at the time.  These houses have all been restored and renovated many times.

One of the owners had traveled extensively and collected some exquisite Japanese prints, which I photographed.  "Do you own an old home?" the docent asked.  "No, we live in a home we designed and built in 1983, but we have filled it with Oriental art like this," I said.

The house on the corner of Granville and King was not on the tour - there was a Sotheby's sign on the lawn - but I lingered beneath the arbor of wisteria for a little while.

Across the Street, the imposing Pembroke Hall, ca. 1850, stands on a bluff overlooking Edenton Bay.  The grounds are extensive, with huge lawns extending away from the circular drive and its beautiful fountain.

The rooms inside were high-ceilinged and furnished with antiques.  I was reminded of the setting of a Jane Austen novel.

Bear with me, readers of this Blog!  We have nearly completed our tour, returning again to Broad Street and downtown Edenton.  But before that, we must stop at Beverly Hall (another name from a Jane Austen novel, perhaps?), originally a private bank, with the vault still displayed off the front room.  Notice the bars on walls, ceilings, and even floor.

 

In the hallway off the kitchen, two huge Russian wolf hounds snoozed on the floor, as big as Shetland ponies and just as gentle.

 

When I went out the back door and down the steps, I remembered that the extensive gardens there were featured in the "Easels in the Gardens" tour last year.  This cupid was enclosed in a boxwood circle, to prevent its escape I thought.

 

My feet were, I must admit, just a little tired after all of this walking.  But it was the perfect thing to do two days before a half marathon - slow, easy walking, at the end of this taper period before the race.  I was somehow reminded of that long, convoluted first sentence of Finnegan's Wake:  "A lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."  I had found myself back on the corner of Broad Street and Water Street by a commodius vicus of recirculation, as it were, and my phone rang at that very instant; it was Martha, and we agreed to end our Pilgrimage together in the same place we had begun, in the little brick courtyard behind Edenton Bay Trading Company, before driving back to Duck.  We sat down and talked about the day, this beautiful creature behind me - angel? nymph? - gazing up at the bright blue sky with high clouds scudding past.