Stratford Hall (plantation)
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Stratford Hall
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Back side of Stratford in 2012
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| Coordinates | 38°9′6″N 76°50′23″W / 38.15167°N 76.83972°WCoordinates: 38°9′6″N 76°50′23″W / 38.15167°N 76.83972°W |
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| Built | 1738 |
| Architect | Unknown |
| Architectural style | Georgian |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000851 |
| VLR # | 096-0024 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | October 7, 1960 |
| Designated VLR | September 9, 1969 |
Stratford Hall is a historic house museum near Lerty in Westmoreland County, Virginia. It was the plantation house of four generations of the Lee family of Virginia. It was the boyhood home of two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee, and it was the birthplace of Robert Edward Lee (1807–70), who commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War, and then became the president of Washington College, which later became Washington and Lee University. The estate was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960.
Colonel Thomas Lee (1690-1750) was a Virginian who served as acting Governor of the colony and was a strong advocate for westward expansion. Lee purchased the land for Stratford Hall in 1717, aware of its agricultural and commercial potential as a waterfront site. Construction of the Georgian Great House did not begin until the late 1730s. Designed by an unknown architect, the brick Great House is a two story H-shaped structure, surrounded on four corners by attending outbuildings, all of which still stand today. Following construction of the Great House, Thomas Lee expanded the site into a bustling hive of activity, and soon the working plantation became "a towne in itself" as one visitor to Stratford marveled. A wharf on the Potomac River was the destination for a large number of merchant ships, a grist mill ground wheat and corn there, and slaves and indentured servants farmed tobacco and other crops on the thousands of acres of farmland. Blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, tailors, gardeners, and weavers plied their trades at Thomas Lee's Stratford. Stratford Hall is set in the Historic Northern Neck of Virginia, a rural peninsula where historic Christ Church is located.
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