At Home with History

Take a trip back in time at Richmond’s Tudor-era Agecroft Hall.

We all have dreams, but few have the resolve and means to turn them into reality. Take Richmond entrepreneur T. C. Williams, a self-professed anglophile, who in 1925 purchased a Tudor-era mansion in Lancashire, England, right outside of Manchester. He had it disassembled, crated up, and shipped across the ocean to Virginia, where it was put back together at what is now known as Windsor Farms, an idyllic Richmond neighborhood designed to look like an English village, its curvy streets named after Dover, Canterbury, and Berkshire. 

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Stained glass crest in Agecroft Hall.

A museum since 1969, a couple of years after Williams’ widow Elizabeth moved out, Agecroft Hall remains a popular destination for tourists with a taste for history or locals enjoying a stroll through the estate’s elegant gardens, designed by Charles Gillette, and Woodland Walk. It is also the home of the annual Richmond Shakespeare Festival and the only place in North America where you can watch a Shakespeare play against the backdrop of a house that stood in England during the famous author’s lifetime.

“A visit to Agecroft Hall & Gardens is like a trip back in time and across an ocean—but without the pesky jetlag,” says Anne Kenny-Urban, the estate’s executive director. “The house and collection are intriguing for those who love history and art, but they also offer a wonderful opportunity for families to make history come alive for their children when they see how people lived centuries ago.”

Agecroft was built around the year 1500, although an original dwelling dates back to the 14th century, and the estate was enlarged in the 1600s. Over the following 400 years, ownership descended first through the Langley and then the Dauntesey families. “By the early 20th century it was vacant, and when no renters could be found for 10 to 15 years, the family prepared to auction off the architectural details of the house before having it demolished,” Kenny-Urban says.

Costumed interpreters in the Tradescant Garden.

In 1925, Williams, looking to build a British country home, seized the opportunity. He tasked Henry Morse, an architect from New York, to design his new estate. Morse had already overseen the construction of Virginia House, a new estate in Windsor Farms incorporating elements of three historic English homes into a new design. Later that year, Morse saw an auction notice for Agecroft Hall. “Although the Williamses were planning a Georgian-style house, Morse proposed to Williams that he purchase an actual English manor house and transplant it to Richmond,” Kenny-Urban says. 

Sight unseen, Williams purchased the estate for £3,800—about $19,000 at the time. While some of the original Agecroft building was too badly damaged to make the journey, Morse salvaged its sandstone foundation, the old timbers, the leaded glass windows, and the stone roof, which all arrived in Richmond in the spring of 1926 by train and via the Richmond Canal. At roughly $250,000 (about $3.4 million in today’s dollars), the cost to dismantle, crate, ship, and adaptively rebuild the house was more than tenfold the purchase price.

T.C. Williams in the garden in 1926.

Tragically, Williams did not get to enjoy his historic English mansion for long—he died in 1929. His wife, Elizabeth, remarried and lived at Agecroft Hall for four more decades. Because Williams left an endowment in his will to convert Agecroft to a museum when his wife died or moved out, in 1969 the estate became a museum that interprets life in a Tudor manor house. Today Agecroft Hall, with its half-timbering, jetty walls, cross-gabled roofs, and massive chimneys, is overseen by a board of directors.

Much of the building is decorated with original Tudor-era furniture, such as a painted bed decorated with various symbols of fertility in one of the upstairs bedrooms. ”The most curious details are the red headed, mustached angles in the four corners of the tester,” Kenny-Urban says. “Imagine opening your eyes in the morning and those angels looking down on you being the first thing you saw.” 

A mid-16th century painting of William Dauntesey is one of the museum’s most prized possessions. While Agecroft Hall originally belonged to the Langley family, the property was divided up among Robert Langley’s four daughters after he died without sons. Anne Langley eventually inherited the estate and married William Dauntesey, who came from a wealthy family of wool merchants and who enlarged the house. “He has now witnessed more than four centuries of the house’s history,” Kenny-Urban says of Dauntesey’s painting. 

Actors in the Shakespeare Festival.

In the great parlor, an apotropaic mark in the form of a subtle daisy wheel pattern is still visible on one of the wooden panels surrounding the fireplace. Designed to ward off witches and other evil spirits, these hex marks are often placed near windows, doors, and fireplaces because it was thought that evil spirits could enter a house at those places.

The upstairs library ceiling, which was originally the ceiling for the great hall when the house was in England, boasts Tudor rose bosses (decorative knobs). It is the one room that Elizabeth Williams requested remain as it had been when she entertained guests there in the 20th century. 

Groundbreaking in 1926.

Public events have been central to the museum since Williams’ departure. The annual Yuletides celebration, planned for Dec. 13, is a family holiday event that attracts up to 900 visitors, depending on the weather. Most of the free event is outside, but the museum will also offer short tours of the house, which is decorated for the holidays. The Shakespeare Festival, a tradition since 1999, spans several days and showcases some of the bard’s finest work in the courtyard of the authentic Tudor home. “We certainly hope to be able to return to hosting the Richmond Shakespeare Festival next summer,” Kenny-Urban says. In addition, look for the return of Shakespeare’s Birthday, kids’ summer camps, and more. 

Agecroft Hall is currently open to visitors with limited hours (Thursday-Sunday from 12-5 p.m.). The Gardens are open from noon to sunset. “Our gardens have been very popular with the current interest in socializing outside, and we believe that the gardens offer a place for peace and relaxation in these trying times,” Kenny-Urban says. AgecroftHall.org

This article originally appeared in the December 2020 issue.