The Beckford Parish Home

Location: One and one half miles northeast of Maurertown, Virginia, Route 654, one mile then turn north, one half mile, on private road.

Built: circa 1770

Owners:

Glebe Lands: 23 Jan 1799, an act for the sale of certain glebe lands in the county of Nottoway and Shenandoah passed.

In 1937, the Beckford Parish Home was under the direction of the County Board of Supervisors.




Physical Description

The Beckford Parish Home is an odd-shaped, rambling structure that shows how it has been added to and modified at different times. It has five sections, three of which are single story, connected by two two-story sections. Long porches with railing balusters and champed posts run the entire length of the house, with additional side and back porches of the same type.

The rectangular building of common brick has a metal gabled roof and thirteen brick chimneys at the ends and throughout the middle. There are fifteen windows with twenty 8x10 panes and twenty seven windows with fifteen 8x10 panes. The windows on the older part of the home have shutters with stationary slats.

There are twenty nine large and three small rooms with eight and one half foot ceilings. This home has five cellars with part brick floors.

Historical significance

Stories abound as to the origin of this county home, or Poor House, as it was originally called, but most of this information is undocumented. One of these stories is that a woman gave the land for the poor of Beckford Parish, and that she was buried on the farm, near the barn, in an unmarked grave.




Source: Virginia W.P.A. Historical Inventory Project, 1937





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Created October 1 2001