Bremo Plantation

Bremo Plantation is a large estate of roughly 2,975 acres above the James River in Fluvanna County, Virginia. It includes nearly a dozen structures of architectural interest. The principal house, Upper Bremo, was completed in 1820 for General John Hartwell Cocke in the Palladian style associated with Thomas Jefferson, with a Tuscan portico, Chinese lattice railings and high-ceilinged principal rooms. Master carpenter John Neilson, who had worked at Monticello, gave the house its final form. Around 1844 Cocke rebuilt two smaller houses, Bremo Recess and Lower Bremo, in a Jacobean manner with curved gables and clustered chimneys. Farm buildings include a stone barn with a Tuscan portico, a milk house, a stable, rare pise slave quarters, a slave chapel and a relocated Temperance monument. Cocke was a planter, soldier and reformer active in agriculture, colonization, temperance and education. The property was listed because the whole group reflects his taste and Jefferson's influence.