In Virginia, Carter’s Grove estate is in disrepair

Both the house and tech pioneer Halsey Minor, who bought the home, have fallen on hard times.

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Carter’s Grove, on the northern bank of the James River near Williamsburg, was built in 1750 by Carter Burwell, grandson of Robert “King” Carter, an early Colonial land baron. It was meant to awe visitors with physical evidence of the bountiful riches that could be wrung from the New World wilderness

Colonial Williamsburg/Virginia Tourism Corp. /

Halsey Minor, a San Francisco tech investor from an old Charlottesville family, bought Carter’s Grove from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 2007 for $15.3 million and vowed to restore it. But Minor never did the repairs, nor did he finish paying for the mansion. According to court documents, he stopped payments in mid-2010 with less than $4 million still owed.

Halsey Minor / AP

Foreign presidents and prime ministers visited Carter’s Grove during the 1983 G-7 summit held in Williamsburg, lining up with then-President Ronald Reagan for a photograph in front of the mansion. The house was once reputed to be America’s loveliest Colonialera plantation house.

Bob Daugherty / AP

A 1992 photo shows the reconstructed slave quarters at Carter's Grove. Once part of Colonial Williamsburg, the estate averaged only 562 visitors a day, but it cost $860,000 a year to operate. Colonial Williamsburg closed it in January 2003, and eventually decided to sell the mansion and its nearly 500 acres.

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Slave reenactors, from left, Karen Sutton, Hope Smith, and Brian Ashlock at Carter's Grove in 1998.

Kyndell Harkness / AP

The smoking room at Carter's Grove, seen in a 1992 photo.

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

Among the storied features of Carter’s Grove is its elegant staircase, seen in a 2001 photograph. As legend has it, a marauding Revolutionary War colonel who billeted his Redcoats there rode a horse up the staircase, hacking the grand railing with his sword along the way.

John H. Sheally II / The Virginian-Pilot

The property is showing evidence of neglect, such as failing plaster. The deterioration has “reached a critical level and is accelerating rapidly. ... Irreversible damage ... has occurred,” the Department of Historic Resources has said.

Virginia Department of Historic Resources

The aging floors at Carter’s Grove. For 260 years, the estate survived looting, flood, hurricane, earthquake and a Hollywood crew filming a now-forgotten Cary Grant movie. But it has sat empty and neglected for years.

Virginia Department of Historic Resources

A room on the second floor shows signs of mold over the door.

Virginia Department of Historic Resources

In the 1970s, archaeologist Ivor Noël Hume discovered Wolstenholme Towne, an English settlement founded in 1620 and lost to history for nearly 400 years. For his work, Hume was named an Officer of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth in 1992. He says the archaeological value of Carter’s Grove has been ruined.

Colonial Williamsburg

The dining room table set for tea in 2001, during Carter’s Grove’s days as a Colonial Williamsburg museum.

John H. Sheally II / The Virginian-Pilot

An undated photo of Carter’s Grove’s parlor, also known as “The Refusal Room,” with period furnishings.

/ AP

Carter's Grove “is one of the most unfortunate preservation tragedies in recent years,” says Hume, 85. On April 6, a judge appointed an independent trustee to manage the estate. Minor’s disastrous 4½-year reign as Lord of Carter’s Grove was over. The current plan is to put Carter’s Grove up for sale, again.

Steve Earley / The Virginian-Pilot

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