Belmead (Boundary Increase)

Belmead is a two-story, stuccoed brick house in Powhatan County, Virginia, begun around 1845 for Philip St. George Cocke and designed by Gothic Revival architect Alexander Jackson Davis. Towers with Tudor-arched openings, crenellations, diamond-paned casement windows, clustered chimney stacks and stepped gable ends give it a medieval character, while the interior has tall double doors, coffered ceilings and marble mantels echoing the Tudor arch. The design was adapted from a Northern style into a more open form suited to Southern living, and the house is paired with Staunton Hill as the state's only complete Gothic Villa expression. Cocke was a progressive agronomist and a Confederate brigadier general. After later owners, Belmead was bought in the 1890s by Edward and Louise Morrell, who conveyed it in 1897 to the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for a school educating Black and Native American students. It continued as part of that school's campus.