Huntley: A Mason Family Country HouseWrenn, Tony P.
History
Huntley: A Mason Family Country House
Wrenn, Tony P.
Huntley (Va.)
The second floor room has a simple mantel and moldings. It has the ovolo
curve in the molding around the architraves which was common in the
eighteenth century and persisted into the nineteenth.[54] This room
would have been less used than downstairs rooms and the moldings are
bound to be simpler, as is often found in the nineteenth century, when
the upstairs was no longer as much used as in the eighteenth century.
This room has a tray ceiling of the type one would expect to find
beneath a hip roof, such as Huntley had in the nineteenth century.
Much of the flooring in the house is early, consisting of wide random
width pine boards. The saw marks in the subflooring above the ground
floor center room are vertical, but apparently from a mechanical saw.
Beams under this portion of the house are hand-sawn on one side and
broad-axed on the other.
[Illustration: Figure 13. Detail, exterior door, north facade. 1969.]
[Illustration: Figure 14. Detail, interior of entrance door, south facade,
1969.]
[Illustration: Figure 15. Detail, window and door, central first floor
room. 1969. Photos by Wm. Edmund Barrett]
On the ground floor only the kitchen fireplace in the west side is open.
There is evidence of a possible oven in the west chimney in the center
room. In the east wing the front fireplace has been closed, though a
balancing structural arch in the adjacent room is still open. The floor
on the ground level was brick but floors in all rooms except the rear
room in the east wing have been covered with concrete.
Much early hardware remains at Huntley, some of which fits stylistically
into the period of construction. Most of it cannot be positively dated.
The front door latch, for example, is an old Carpenter-type lock,
generally common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but having
no visible manufacturers mark, it cannot be positively dated.
Door and window architraves in the center first floor room, and in rooms
in the east wing have corner blocks, while those in the west wing do
not. Detail of the architraves throughout is early, and those with
corner blocks are probably contemporary with the rest of the house. In
the center room, first floor, the mantel, door and window architraves,
and panelling beneath windows, all have the same molding details,
indicating that all woodwork is of the same age.
Exterior Features
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