SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2010 BEDCHECK Where antebellum grace meets modern luxury


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ABOVE: 2005 PHOTOS BY PAUL S. BARTHOLOMEW PHOTOGRAPHY; BELOW: ZOFIA SMARDZ/THE WASHINGTON POST


The BerryHill Plantation Resort, an example of Greek Revival architecture that dates from 1842, appears at the end of a long tree-lined driveway. The lobby, above right, features an elegant floating horseshoe staircase. The Carrington Suite, below right, includes a private living room and an enormous bathroom with a pedestal tub. Behind the main building of the South Boston,Va., resort is a modern hotel annex with 88 rooms, a heated lap pool, a spa and a large fitness room.


BY ZOFIA SMARDZ I’d always wanted to stay in


the big house at BerryHill. It’s not that the rooms in the


new hotel wing out back aren’t lovely, with their gleaming mod- ern bathrooms and the little ter- races where you can sit in the morning and the evening, listen- ing to the birds twittering in the trees or watching the moon rise over the woodlands at the back of the 750-acre property. It’s just that the big house, the


original plantationmansionthat Virginia delegateandlandowner James Coles Bruce built in 1842 near South Boston, Va., just abovetheNorth Carolina border, is magnificent. Really, I mean magnificent. It’s a pristine, near-perfect ex-


ample of Greek Revival architec- ture (modeled on the Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia) that escaped the CivilWar prettymuchunscathed (not something you can say for many a Southern antebellum mansion). ItsParthenon-like set- ting on a hill at the end of a long, long, looong tree-lined drive makes it a knock-the-breath-out- of-you sight even before you pull into the gated entrance. The beautiful foyer with the floating horseshoe staircase and the grand, high-ceilinged common rooms could rival what you find in many a European palazzo. Sothe idea of spending a night


playing mistress of the manor had had a hold on me since the first time we’d stayed at Berry Hill Resort and Conference Cen- ter six or seven years ago. But now here I was, lying in the canopied four-poster in the Car- rington Suite—one of two man- sion suites available to hotel guests — and thinking about FredWatkins. Watkins was the Southside millionaire who bought Berry Hill when the Bruce family final- ly sold it in 1950.He worked it as a farm for nearly 40 years, but apparently he never spent a full night in the house himself. The first time he tried to sleep there, the story is, he was scared out of his wits bysomeof the mansion’s ghosts (there are as many as 23, we’re told) and he fled in the middle of the night, refusing to live in it thereafter. I’m thinking about old Fred


now that it’s 2 a.m.,my husband is deep in dreamland beside me, and the great front porch light that had earlier shone through the blinds has been extin- guished. It’s dark, dark, dark in the room. And sooo quiet. The kind of quiet you find yourself listening to. It occurs to me suddenly: We’re all alone in this house. Or are we? Carrington’sRestaurant in the


old master suite directly below us on the first floor, where we’d had a lovely dinner earlier in the evening (no small feat, since all the food has to be transported from a kitchen in the old ser- vants’ quarters in back of the house), closed hours before, and the staff cleared out long ago.No one’s staying in the Bruce Suite across the hall. All the other guests are presumably snug in their beds in the stand-alone 88-room hotel wing, where you also go to check in, although I suppose that any insomniac among them could wander


through the house at any hour. I’mthinking so hard about all


this, especially after I hear the three funny little pock-pock- pocksoundsthat Ican’t place the source of, that the next thing I know . . . the morning light is streaming through the east-fac- ing window that I’d left unshad- ed, and I can smell the coffeemy husband has made in the pot in the bathroom. About that bathroom: It’s


huge, as big as many a hotel room (the whole suite is enor- mous, really, 808 square feet with a large sitting area in the bedroom, plus a whole separate “living room”), and just about everything is as originally in- stalled. When precisely that was is a bit of a question, but it seems that one of the Bruce daughters married into the Crane plumb- ing family of Chicago, and Berry Hill consequently was graced withsomeof the earliest residen- tial bathrooms in the country. The one in the Bruce Suite


was put in sometime around the turn of the 20th century (no shower, fair warning, just a tub with a European-style, hand- held “telephone” faucet), accord- ing to Lealand Luck, the tour guidewhoshows us around later in the day. Ours appears to be a slightly later model, but still from the early half of the last century, and it works like a dream. There’s a push-button flush on the toilet, which sits so high off the ground that you understand where that whole “throne” nickname came from. And the shower! There’s a rain shower head of the type that’s all the rage in modernMcMansions and hipster pads, plus a U- shaped bar that shoots jets of water at you sideways. (Watch out getting in and out of the tub, though; it’s a giant step.) There’s also a towel-warmer, though I couldn’t get it to work. Don’t know whether it was me or the machine. It’s all a far cry from the


gentlemen’s privy that we see on our tour, though even that was


apparently luxe for its day, with three separate stalls—anddoors to each one! It’s a rainy day, sowe keep indoors, mostly, checking out the heated lap pool, the impressively large fitness room and the Blackberry Spa (not my thing, but for those of you who soak up that sort of thing, it looks very nice, so go for it). In the mansion foyer, we ex-


amine a section of the floor where the new carpet has been pulled back to reveal the original —or at least old—floorcloth and to show how the pattern is re- created in the new carpet. Now this I find impressive: a careful, precise renovation (I’m into the old house preservation thing). This was the work of a French


insurance company called Axa, which bought Berry Hill — a National Historic Landmark — in the late 1990s as a conference and training center for its execu- tives (the French taste shows). But the company, which had lots of World Trade Center clients, took ahuge hit after 9/11andhad to dump its investment for a song. Since then, Berry Hill has suffered “some lean years,” ac- cording to Lealand. An effort to turn it into a large-scale luxury resort a la the Homestead fal- tered (though there’s tennis, nearby golf, hiking, biking, horseback riding and more). Founder’s College, a recent start- up on the grounds, foundered. Today, BerryHill isownedby a


wealthy Baltimore surgeon who “has dug in his heels,” says Lealand, and is slowly turning the place around. Mostly, it ap- pears, this is on the strength of renting it out for weddings. Now normally, I would find


this a bit distressing, as it means that you’re jostling elbows with partying revelers from early spring to late fall. But in this case, I’m hoping fervently that the marriage institution stays strong for eons to come. Because I want to come back and play mistress of the manor many, many times more. smardzz@washpost.com


DETAILS


Berry Hill Resort&Conference Center 3105 River Rd., South Boston, Va. 434-517-7000 www.berryhillonline.com Rooms from $149. Carrington and Bruce suites $269. Continental breakfast included.


WINTER ESCAPE


Per person. Restrictions apply.


Includes Liſt and Lodging


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