S TO RY O F A H O U S E
The Healing House A thoughtful restoration brings Kelly Plantation new life BY DEBORAH SALOMON • PHOTOGRAPHS BY GLENN DICKERSON
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ntiquity has an allowed gas fireplaces and a storm door, aroma. Enter an but wood, metal, brick, ceramic tile and antique shop — and granite did not yield to manufactured inhale. In an old surfaces. house, layers of paint Yet because of the picket fence, young barely mask the pleasant mustiness. landscaping and freshly painted clapSurprisingly, Nancy Blount’s restoraboards, passersby might mistake the house tion crew found only two layers of paint for contemporary when, in fact, it reflects on the walls of Kelly Plantation, comregional history. pleted in 1842 by slave labor on a knoll John Kelly and his brothers, born on overlooking Alexander Kelly’s 3,000 the Isle of Skye in Scotland, immigrated acres just outside Carthage. Little else to Moore County in 1803, part of the had changed: The boxy four-over-four Highland Scot influx. John prospered as a layout remained virtually intact. Doors lawyer and landowner. He commissioned with massive iron locks were original. nephew Alexander Kelly, who had archiFloors had not been varnished. tectural leanings, to build the house. For 168 years, this door and these windows Bathrooms were present but not closets. Timber was cut and bricks were fired on have fronted the Kelly Plantation. The bones stood simple, practical, the premises. Construction took seven unembellished. years. Alexander Kelly, sheriff of Moore Yet the vacant residence had suffered. County during the Civil War, state senator, part-owner of the As had Blount. Her husband died suddenly in 2001. Virginia Tyson Kelly Carriage Works and reportedly the county’s richest natives Nancy and Doug Blount shared a love of Southern history, man, purchased the house after John’s death. lore and furnishings. The Kelly Plantation is one of only three surviving antebellum “Other men played golf while their wives did something else. mansions in Moore County. Kelly descendants occupied the house Our Saturday outing was going to an auction,” Blount says. “We until 1998. did it together.” “We had the most wonderful home to grow up in,” says After Doug’s death, Kelly Plantation became her healing house. Rosemary Kelly Thomas of Wilmington — even though the loo “I needed a project.” was still a “johnny house” and eight fireplaces barely heated rooms Ray Owen, Southern Pines history buff and friend, understood with 12-ft. ceilings. Thomas and her five siblings slept in the 18her need. by-20 ft. second floor bedroom, now the master bed-sitting room “I knew Nancy was looking for a house in Virginia,” Owen says. — except during summers, when they moved onto the back porch “But I also knew the Kelly property might be available.” Owen with the “lightnin’ bugs.” appreciated its potential. “I see the hand of humanity in that The worn back door sill reminds Thomas of the Kelly children house. It has a really old feeling, a place for reflection, a spiritual running in and out to a rope swing suspended from the massive place.” Blount encouraged Owen to investigate. A deal was con300-year-old oak which stands, barely, in the yard. cluded with the neighbor who owned the unattended homestead. “Every time that tree loses a limb I grieve,” Blount says. Blount’s “project” turned monumental. She didn’t want an The architectural style falls between transitional Federal and antebellum shell masking contemporary conveniences. No Greek Revival, with a sprinkling of New England saltbox. As was armoires hiding flat-screen TVs; no wall-hung kitchen cabinets, the norm, rooms were large but few. Yet the eight-room house spa tubs, wine cellars or recessed lights. The house was not never felt crowded with 10 people in residence, Thomas recalls. amenable to the blown insulation, vacuum system and the geoAnd now, she says, “It’s absolutely gorgeous. I never dreamed it thermal heating/cooling system Blount hoped to install. She would be this pretty.”
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January 2010
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