When David Peebles purchased his historic property located just off Route 17, Gloucester didn’t yet have the George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge to connect it to the Peninsula – nor did the town have much else, for that matter.
“When I came here there was a Tastee Freez and one stoplight,” said David, who co-founded Ferguson Enterprises Inc. “Everything else pretty much has developed since then.”
David’s home, a Georgian Colonial Manor built in 1810, now has access to everything one could need but feels like a private getaway in a whole different era. It wasn’t always this way.
When David bought the house in 1952, the only plumbing it had was a pitcher pump in the English basement. The basement also had some electrical, but none of the three floors above did, and the top floor was unfinished. The porches pretty much were rotting off and the building had an asbestos roof which needed to be replaced.
But that didn’t scare off David, who was drawn to the intricate hand-carved moldings, original flooring, raised paneling and countless other original features still there today.
Over the years, David and wife Mary transformed the home in function while preserving its historic character. They added all the modern conveniences like plumbing, electrical and HVAC and repaired or replaced everything that couldn’t be saved, like the windows.
“There had been a lot of shattering of the windows during WWII with the naval weapons station training so close by,” David said. “A lot of people had trouble with this because the old glass in these churches and houses was very brittle.” David kept the original windows in storage and replaced them with replicas that would be more durable and airtight.
The Peebles built on additional wings of the home, like the kitchen wing, turning to Colonial Williamsburg architects eventually to get the details accurate. The kitchen had previously been located in the English basement, spacious in size but containing little more than a wood stove and a trap right outside the window to catch blackbirds for lunch, according to David.
Around the house, the property had a barn, outhouse, chicken coop and an ice house. The ice house had caught fire at some point, but David chose to keep it as-is as a nod to the past.
“I’ve left it that way over the years because there wasn’t a good use for it and it’s much more attractive as a ruins than modifying it,” David said.
It’s just one of many unique features of the estate, which encompasses more than seventy acres with frontage on Vaughan’s Creek, a tributary of the Severn River. It includes twenty acres of gardens, a stable, pool, tennis court and even a secret garden.
“It’s a beautiful place in the spring,” said David. “It’s kind of a labor of love.” The property boasts azaleas, camellias, and day lilies, among many others, and includes a nursery of 10,000 boxwoods which the Peebles sell locally.
David recalls years of good family time spent with his wife and children on the property, formally called Lisburne, as well as hosting friends and employees of his company on the spacious grounds.
Said David, “It’s an ideal place to live. Was then, and is now.”
To learn more about this home, click here.
Where We Live is a weekly feature looking at homes in the Historic Triangle. Do you have a home, on or off the market, that our readers may be interested in seeing? Let us know at [email protected].
