Trinket Cottage: A Not So Big High Country Classic Even the biggest bark-shingled homes in Linville’s National Historic district around Eseeola Lodge are traditionally called cottages, but one really is. Ted and Jane Randolph’s diminutive Trinket Cottage is “a pet house,” Mrs. Randolph said. The bark-sided cottage was built in 1892 by Eseeola Lodge as “bachelor quarters” for beaus who followed young girlfriends’ families to Linville in the summer. Trinket started as two separate structures moved into place and linked by a breezeway. It was purchased by an Eseeola employee in 1929 and the breezeway was enclosed as a living room. Meanwhile, Ted Randolph’s parents had started coming to the mountains. They “didn’t much like Blowing Rock,” he says, so they took the stage on the Yonahlossee Road to Linville and became regulars at Eseeola from 1907 to 1920 when their own bark cottage Fenbrook was built just across the road from Trinket. Randolph’s parents bought the cottage in the 1930s and he and Jane eventually purchased it in 1984. Over the years, small additions and winterization have taken place. Today’s not so big Linville cottage includes an enlarged kitchen, a second living room and two small bathrooms, all true to Sarah’s ethos of making elegant use of every nook and cranny. The wealth of richly atmospheric details go beyond the antique tubs, exposed bark log beams, and idiosyncratic craftsmanship you’d expect in a 117-year-old house. Three leaded glass windows from Mr. Randolph’s mother’s house in Birmingham, Ala. draw the eye. Any stroll through Trinket begs comparisons with the most classic summer homes—or traditions of summer culture—anywhere in the United States. One upstairs room with a bunk bed is the “girl’s dormitory.” The cedar-lined “smell good closet” is the stuff of generations of childhood memories. Mr. Randolph flips a discreet switch on
If You Can Dream It, I Can Help You Find It.
Ted and Jane Randolph
the stairs and a concealed fan leaps to life, instantly drawing a cool breeze through every screen door and window. Hanging on one wall is a golf tournament participant portrait that includes Mr. Randolph’s parents and others sprawled on the grass in 1912. The house is full of wormy chestnut details, and most walls are made of virgin-timber size planks with the distinctive repetitive semi-circle pattern of 19th century rough-cut lumber. Trinket is a real gem, a jewel, itself almost a trinket of another time. But no reference to size earned the cottage its name. “In the early years, a pony named Trinket ferried people around Linville in a cart, and when he was finished, he always wandered back to the bachelor cabin to eat and spend the night in the breezeway,” said Mr. Randolph. “I don’t know whether the boys were tempting him with beer or what, but the cottage became Trinket, too.”
David Laughter II Phone (828) 295.8485 Mobile (828) 773.7800
132 Park Avenue Blowing Rock, NC 28605
www.BlowingRockRealEstateNC.com David2@BlowingRockRealEstateNC.com
July 2009
High Country Magazine
87