This property has been
listed as a
Contributing Member
of the District
by the United States
Department of the Interior
(Notable Buildings) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
(Inscriptions under the photo of the buildings reading left to right)
Garage, 1910-This garage was for cars, which replaced carriages in the early 1900s; Shed; Storage Shed; Privies-These multi-seat outhouses were sanitary facilities. In back are trap doors for cleaning.
(Colonial Era • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
In the mid-19th century, Eliza Ridgely, third Mistress of Hampton, transformed the Falling Garden. Her gardening legacy remains apparent, with the creation of the Victorian Carpet Bedding displayed in Parterre II, in the plantings of many trees throughout the site, and in the construction of a number of outbuildings including several greenhouses. Professional gardeners supervised the planting and maintenance with workers, paid or enslaved, supplying the labor. The parterre designs you see before you are the same layout as those documented in plans and photographs in the late 19th century.
(Inscription in the lower right)
Parterre I, shown in this 1879 photograph, retained its original geometric configuration through seven generations of the Ridgely family. The other parterres changed following the influences of gardening trends of the day.
(Colonial Era • Patriots & Patriotism • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 4 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
Designed to resemble a Greek temple, the building was heated by the sun through the glass panels on the south and east sides and by a hypocaust furnace. In summer, the potted citrus trees were placed around the garden paths. (Inscription beside the drawing in the upper right) The orangery was heated by a hypocaust, a heating system first used by the ancient Romans. A wood-burning furnace at one end produced heat, which ran through flues under the floor of the building and radiated around the room’s perimeter.
It has been truly said of Hampton that it expresses more grandeur than any other place in America…The formal terraces of exquisitely kept grass, the long rows of superb lemon and orange trees with the adjacent orangerie and the foreign air of the house, quite disturb one’s ideas of republican American.
Henry W. Sergent in A.J. Downing’s A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, 1859.
(Colonial Era • Patriots & Patriotism • Settlements & Settlers) Includes location, directions, 3 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
There were lots of mouths to feed on a large plantation like Hampton and this made corn an all-important crop. Hard or “dent “corn was used as feed for livestock and ground into cornmeal for slaves as well as for the Ridgelys’ pantry. Most importantly, corn was sold for profit. The cornfields here once extended for thousands of acres. The ears were husked and stored in the corncrib to dry.
You can tell how large the corncrib was based on the size of the foundation before you---it held thousands of ears. Once dry, the corn would be shelled and taken to the mill for grinding. Plowing the cornfields was backbreaking labor. Slaves and tenant farmers used mules, housed in the barn seen nearby, to pull plows. These sure-footed workhorses were the “tractors” of the 19th century.
Corn is justly regarded as the national crop of the United States. Its money value is double that of hay, threefold that of wheat, and fourfold that of cotton.
Report, Commissioner of Agriculture, Washington, 1862.
(Inscription in the lower right)
A view of the corncrib and corn shocks from the Farm Road, ca. 1897. The mule barn and corncrib were located near the cornfields to make planting, harvesting, and processing easier. At harvest time, slaves from nearby plantations came to help husk corn and haul ears to the crib. Husking parties were festive events, with competitions, music, and storytelling.
(African Americans • Agriculture • Colonial Era) Includes location, directions, 2 photos, GPS coordinates, map.