The Mystery Building Behind FedEx

During the government shutdown, I had some free time on my hands. OK, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. As luck would have it, I have a friend who likes to explore historic structures. She tipped me off about one on top of a hill, shrouded by trees, behind the local FedEx plant. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

We hopped in the car and off we went, north into Stafford County. As we came up on it, my friend pointed out the mystery building as we drove by, but I couldn't get a good look at it. We turned around and drove past it again. This time I got a better look, but I still wasn't satisfied.

Pulling off the road, it was time to embrace technology: Google Maps' satellite images.

Google Maps arial view
 

Sure enough, there it was. We weren't crazy. But we still had no idea what it was. For now, it was just some odd, tall structure hidden behind some trees on a hill near FedEx. Was is concrete? Maybe. Stone? More likely. Our time had run out for the day, so we headed home. I was dissatisfied, but still very intrigued.

Over the next few days, I got busy doing other things and put the mystery building out of my mind for awhile. Then we decided it was time to go back and explore some more.

Pulling off the side of the road at the base of the hill, I was almost beside myself with excitement. I was hoping it would reveal itself to be some really neat, old building that had long been forgotten. However, the very real possibility that it would turn out to be a boring, abandoned modern structure was still in the back of my mind.

I hopped out of the car and began my ascent up the hill. Right off the bat, it was tougher than I thought it was going to be. The hill was incredibly steep and everything was covered in thorny vines. Nonetheless, I made my way up the hill.

The further I climbed, the closer I got and the more of the building I could see. By the time I reached the top, I knew we had stumbled onto something very cool. This is what I saw:

Overall view of the building

Needless to say, I was very intrigued by what I was beginning to see. This was obviously no modern building. It was also obviously no small structure. This old, stone building was very cool! I was totally excited by it and began snapping pictures to take back with me for research.

 

After I made my way back down the hill, I explained what I had seen to my friend. We spent some time looking at the photos and then left the site, hoping to know more soon.

 

The next day, I did some very simple online sleuthing that led me to some very solid info about the building.  It turned out that the mystery structure was:

 

Chestnut Hill

 

As it turned out, discovering the name of the structure was going to be the easiest (and most straightforward) part about this.

 

Could I track down a solid construction date? Nope. Local lore says part of it may date back to 1660-1677 as a fort ... but that's highly unlikely. The year 1850 (or 1856) is supposedly carved into one of the chimneys. That's a more likely date. Still, an exact date is unknown.

 

When documented by Julia Heflin in 1937 for the WPA, she had little to report on the home. "There is no history attached to this place," she wrote. While her research skills are incredibly poor, she did manage to take a photo of the old place. It's not a great photo, but her photography skills are certainly better than her research skills.

 

Chestnut Hill in 1937

 

Despite being a mystery-filled, three-story, stone oddity, Chestnut Hill can lay claim to being the first home in Stafford County to have an indoor bathtub with running water ... gravity fed, of course. A pipe ran from a local spring into the stone tub and could be filled with just the turn of a handle. It must have been neat to see, but I wouldn't want to bathe in such cold water!

 

Chestnut Hill was occupied well into the 20th century. It was sold in 1964 and then, like many historic homes in this area, burned under mysterious circumstances in 1967. It was obviously never rebuilt.

 

At any rate, the home (or what's left of it) is very neat and I was happy to learn 1) that it even exists and 2) that it has such a neat history.

 

More about Chestnut Hill can be found in a great new book, Land of Hogs and Wildcats: People and Places of Lower Stafford County, Virginia, by my good friend and local historian Jerrilynn Eby. You can get the book by clicking here. Jerrilynn is a wealth of information and all of her books about Stafford are great!

 

Well, thanks for joining me for this installment of The Ambling Historian!