Comments
As someone who has always loved old homes, I am happy to have spent a large portion of my life in Virginia. Virginia has a great sense of her history and what an important part old homes play in that history. I know developers hate having to deal with the costs involved in saving old homes when they purchase large pieces of property, I am always seeing articles in the local newspapers about efforts being made to save homes from “progress”.
I know many states have beautiful old homes in the countryside and in the historic centers of the old towns. And as the leaves begin to change, I love driving around Virginia and enjoying the architecture as much as I do the landscape’s changing colors.
I live in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley now, with the Blue Ridge Mountains to the east of my home, and as the Fall Festivals begin, I will visit the old homes of Charlottesville and Albermarle County on the other side of the Blue Ridge. I will take a motorcycle ride up by the beautiful homes of Warrenton and Fauquier County, where I once lived, and then out to Waterford and Taylorstown in Loudoun County where I grew up (and where my parents still live). All the quiet country roads will have architecture from the 1700’s and 1800’s, some of the homes in Waterford go back to the 1600’s.
I will stand in these villages and towns and sample the apple cider and apple butter, and see the pumpkins and Indian Corn scattered about. I am always amazed at the character these old homes have, and I try to imagine the families that have lived in these houses since they were first built. Children were born, people laughed, people cried, families gathered for the holidays, children went off to war, each house has a story to tell. My parents’ home was built in the late 1700’s and I often wondered about the previous people who slept in the bedrooms my sister and I used as we grew up. What had become of them? Did they go on to a happy life? Did they ever think about the home they grew up in?
I never think these thoughts when I look at new homes. I know the day will come when they are old and have their own history, but somehow I don’t think it will be the same. I can’t imagine these look-alike homes in huge communities ever having the character that the old homes of today have. And every time I am in the old towns and villages of Virginia or driving down one of Virginia’s country roads, I am so glad that Virginia has a sense of her history and works to preserve it.
