WINDSOR HISTORIC HOMES

King-Bazemore House...c. 1763

Moved to Hope plantation in 1974, this colonial house has a gambrel
roof, hall-parlor plan, and full shed porch and rear shed rooms.  The end walls, laid in Flemish bond, contain interior chimneys with T-shaped bricks - a feature seen more often in Virginia than in NC.  Chiminye
bricks are inscribed with the building date and the initials of William
and Elizabeth King,
members of the county's rising planter class.  The dwelling is finished
in restrained Goergian
style and displays the highest quality carpentry of its time.

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The following information is  from Eastern  N. Carolina Architecture, by
Catherine Bishir)


ROSEFIELD, Windsor, NC- a plantation house on the edge of Windsor, it is
still owned by descendents of John Gray, who acquired the land in 1729.
The frame house is one of the few 18th c. houses in the region whose
builder is documented.  It began as a small house:  3-bay section to the
east, 2 storied with a single room and a passage on each floor, finished
in simple Georgian style.  It was built by Gilbert Leigh, who in 1786
contracted with Stevens Gray to build the 28 x 18 foot house "to be done
in a good workmanlike manner what belongs to a carpenter and Joiner."
Leigh, a master builder active in Edenton and the Albemarle area, may
also have executed the 2-story, 2-bay addition a few years later.  The
house has grown iwth subsequent generations of the Gray family.  The
front porch and a 2-story rear ell were added in 1855.  A family
cemetery and outbuildings remain.

THE FREEMAN HOTEL, Windsor, NC - a rare survival of an antebellum frame
commercial building.  It is a 2-story structure with Greek Revival
details, pedimented gable ends with fanlights, and a 2-tier porch.

WINDSOR CASTLE, Windsor, NC -This antebellum plantation build by one
generation was aggrandized by the next with an early 20th c. classical
portico evoking the old glories of the South.  Patrick Henry Winston,
who came to Bertie Co. as a schoolteacher and became a successful
lawyer, bought part of the old Gray family plantation in 1858, retained
its nickname "Windsor Castle", and soon built trhe 2-story frame house
in Greek Revivial-Italianate style.  Here he and his wife, Martha Byrd,
raised four accomplished sons (see Charles Smallwood's diary and his
reference to the Winstons):  George T. Winston, president of present NC
State University, the University of Texas, and the University of North
Carolina; Robert W. Winston, judge and author; Patrick H. Winston, Jr.,
newspaper published and attorney general in Washington; and Francis D.
Winston, leader in the Democratic party campagins of 1898 and 1900,
judge, and lieutenant governor.  Francis D. Winston continued to reside
at Windsor Castle and around 1908 added the Colonial Revival portico
with full-height Ionic columns. The home was in the hands of the
Castelloe family after that, and is now owned by Munroe Bell and his
family.

Contributed by Mollie Urquhart.