Ash Grove

One of the few standing 18th century houses in Virginia, this treasure of days past looks a bit incongruous, surrounded by well-groomed contemporary luxury homes, but it is well worth a look!

Ash Grove was built in 1790 by Bryan Fairfax for his son Thomas - the ninth Lord Fairfax. The Fairfax family called Ash Grove home until 1847, after Captain Henry Fairfax, the second son of Thomas, died in the Mexican-American War.

In 1851, the property was purchased by James Sherman. The house remained in the Sherman Family until 1997, at which time they sold it to the Fairfax County Park Authority to be dedicated as a park.

The house itself is boasts 4,200 square feet of finished space. It was severely damaged by a fire in 1960 that could have destroyed the historic home, but as luck would have it, many architectural features had been removed from the house before the blaze, allowing for the home to be restored. There are charred sections of the wooden flooring that still stand as reminders of the fire.

In addition to the main house, there are also a restored 18th century brick kitchen and smokehouse on the property. In 2014 during a restoration effort to fix issues with the hand-hewn wooden framework of the smokehouse, a cache of marbles believed to date back to the 1920s was found in a thick layer of sand underneath the structure. This archeological treasure provided rare insights into the lives of children living during that era.