Historic Houses at the Heart of the Hunt
Written by Bill Kent | Photos by Joanne Maisano
The grand old houses of Hunt Country rise like monuments at the end of long driveways. To see them crowning a hill framed by the Blue Ridge Mountains is to go back to an age when things moved slower.
Except on some 90 days each year, from September through March, when the houses form a backdrop to a dignified gathering of horses and riders, and the morning stillness erupts with the baying of hounds and the thunder of hooves that signal a hunt is on.
The houses, and the land they command, are linked to a hunting tradition and equestrian lifestyle that predates the founding of America. The most famous of these is roughly equidistant between Middleburg and Upperville. Dating to 1775, Welbourne and its 520 acres have been in the Dulany family for eight generations.
It was here in 1840 that Colonel Richard Henry Dulany founded the Piedmont Fox Hounds, the nation’s first and oldest organized hunt. Thirteen years later, he established the Upperville Colt & Horse Show, to promote better care of horses. UCHS remains the oldest equestrian show of its kind in the country.
“Welbourne was recognized as the epicenter of foxhunting in Virginia, if not the United States. The same case could be made today,” says Dulany Morison, an avid foxhunter and member of the same family. In 1905, Welbourne was home to the opening hunt of the Great Hound Match, a two-week competition pitting English-bred foxhounds (some traveling from Britain, Ireland, and Canada) against their American cousins to determine which breed was the world’s best.
The results favored the Americans.
Since the 1930s, Welbourne — still home to the Dulany family — has operated as a bed-and-breakfast, whose guests have included novelists Thomas Wolfe and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Dulanys also have a horse retirement farm on the estate, where steeds who have been put out to pasture can spend their final years in tranquility.
In addition to being a launching pad for at least two other hunts throughout the season, Welbourne also hosts an annual hunt breakfast the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Rebecca Dulany Morison, who manages the Welbourne manor house, says many guests book stays when the hunt is meeting. “Our guests love seeing the hunt off and learning about the sport. Others come expressly because they already appreciate our local history and want to experience it firsthand. We strive to make it clear that without stewards of the countryside, this rural way of life and, by extension, hunting, would no longer exist.”
She adds that “Dulany and I, and the rest of our siblings and cousins, were taught that Welbourne is bigger than all of us and we are merely the stewards. To that end, we put the whole farm in easement, forever protecting it from development. It also means that if we ever did need to sell the farm, it would go in one parcel, keeping together the original 520 acres that our great-great-great-great-grandparents bought in 1830. I suspect if we ever had to sell, we would put a restriction on the sale that foxhunting would always be allowed.”
She assures us that a sale is not likely. “The time and effort we invest does not come back to us in financial reward, but in the satisfaction of knowing that we are preserving our family farm for future generations to enjoy.”
Further west, in Clarke County, Anne McIntosh, a Realtor and master of the Blue Ridge Hunt, has some advice for anyone considering owning a Hunt Country historic house: “Take some time and figure out what you’re going to do with it.” And, while you’re working it out, she adds, let the hunt meet on your lawn. “It’s part of the house’s heritage. It’s a tradition that goes way, way back, and there’s nothing like it anywhere else.”
Though she has hunted throughout Northern Virginia, McIntosh’s all-time favorite place for meets remains Carter Hall, the grandest of several historic houses in and around Millwood.
“Carter Hall not only looks great, but so many people in Millwood and Clarke County are connected to it in one way or another,” she continues. “Some are descendants of the family. Others know it from the mills and the church Nathaniel Burwell built. When the hunt meets at Carter Hall, you feel that connection.”
Begun in 1792, the house was one of several homes of Revolutionary War Colonel Nathaniel Burwell, whose holdings, including an inheritance from his father, made him at one time the largest landowner in Virginia. The house today includes less than 280 acres of what was once more than 10,000.
After passing from the Burwell family, it was bought in 1930 by Gerard Lambert, who made his fortune marketing the Listerine oral antiseptic. His eldest daughter, Rachel, known to her friends as “Bunny,” would study at Foxcroft School, marry philanthropist and horse breeder Paul Mellon, and become one of the America’s most admired gardeners and landscape designers, residing at her Upperville home at Oak Spring, 16 miles to the east.
Carter Hall is now owned by Langdon and Blakeley Greenhaugh, whose plan to transform it into a bed-and-breakfast was thwarted by zoning issues. The house is not open to the public, but spectators who join the hunt when it meets there can view the immediate surroundings.
“I think it’s a miracle when somebody comes along and buys these old houses to be their stewards for 50 years of their lives,” McIntosh says. “As properties are sold off and carved up to the east, we can still hunt here. We couldn’t be happier.”
This year, when the Blue Ridge Hunt meets at Long Branch on Thanksgiving morning, visitors can watch on the sidelines and cheer the hounds and riders as they go by.
Then they can go back to the house, climb the floating staircase to the second floor, and watch the horses wandering over the rich pastures. They may admire the painting of Henry Z. Isaacs, a Baltimore clothing businessman and horse breeder, and be grateful that he saved the property in the 1980s.
As administrator of Long Branch, an 1811 house on 400 acres named for a stream that runs behind it, Amanda West has seen the estate host art shows, Easter egg hunts, and weddings. What moves her the most is the story of how one man fell in love with the house, rescued it from ruin, and turned it into a community center for everyone to enjoy.
The house was constructed by Robert Carter Burwell — grandson of Nathaniel Burwell — who died in Norfolk during the War of 1812. The house went to his sister, passing to relatives who lived in it until 1957. By 1982, the house was in serious disrepair. When the owners defaulted on their mortgage, Henry Isaacs, planning to extend his Maryland-based horse breeding operations into Virginia, bought Long Branch at auction.
“Mr. Isaacs originally was going to breed horses here, and he loved it so much, he decided to restore it and live here,” West says. “He spared no expense in his renovation of the house and property.”
Before Isaacs died in 1990, he created a foundation that would maintain the house in perpetuity. Then he decreed the house and its gardens would be used as a place for community events and public and private celebrations. It is open to the public and beloved by all who visit.
Long Branch is run by a local nonprofit that operates out of Millwood, and a Baltimore-based endowment established a horse retirement program like Welbourne’s on the property, where 75 horses from as far away as New York and Florida live out their lives. The retirement program helps fund the house’s operation.
“The thing about these houses is that they are not frozen in time,” West says. “For people who hunt, for those who get married here, or just visit for a nice picnic or walk, the history continues.” ML
Featured image: BRH at Long Branch.
Published in the November 2025 issue of Middleburg Life.