Windsor Shades

Windsor Shades (also known as Ruffin's Ferry and Waterville) is located on the Pamunkey River in Sweet Hall, Virginia, United States. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/050-0070/ Archeological native artifacts found on the property surrounding the house suggest it was the site of Kupkipcok, a Pamunkey village noted on John Smith's 1609 map.Helen C. Roundtree, Wayne E. Clark and Kent Mountford. John Smith's Chesapeake Voyages 1607-1609, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2007.Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Richmond, Archeological Report- Site 44 KW 0275, April 2, 2007.

Description

The property's land title is not clear, owing to the destruction of King William County records, but the house is assumed to have been built around 1750.Virginia Historical Society Landmark Commission staff, National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Windsor Shades Department of Historical Resources, December 1976. It is a story-and-a-half, 5 bay gambled roofed, frame structure covered with beaded weatherboards and set on a low, stone and English-bond brick basement. The house has striking massive Flemish-bond brick chimney stacks at either end. In the basement is a large tavern room with reportedly one of the largest interior cooking hearths in Tidewater, Virginia.Francis Archer Christian and Susanne Williams Massie editors, Homes and Gardens in Old Virginia, Richmond, Jarrett and Massie Incorporated, 1950. pp255-258 The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.National Park Services, United States Department of the Interior, National Register of Historic Places- Listing 780 0 3025 In 1999 two wings were added on either side of the main block with little alteration of the original structure.

In 1754, Captain Thomas Dansie established a ferry at the site and operated a tavern in the house.Malcolm H. Harris, Old New Kent County, Some Account of the Planters, Plantations, and Places in New Kent County, Volume 2. West Point, Virginia, Malcolm Hart Harris, MD, 1977. pp 606-607. The ferry was in operation until 1927 when a bridge was built in West Point. During the years the house was operated as a tavern with a ferry crossing, it was frequented by many notable travelers such as George Washington, who patronized it from the 1750s on his Burgess Route to Williamsburg.John R. Maass, George Washington's Virginia, Charleston, South Carolina. The History Press, 2017, p. 153. In August 1781, the Marquis de Lafayette crossed the Pamunkey by ferry with 4,500 troops. He spent two weeks in King William County, moving between Windsor Shades and Chelsea Plantation.Bulletin of the King William County Historical Society, October 1976, King William, Virginia. On September 13, 1781, Washington and Rochambeau crossed the Pamunkey at Ruffin's Ferry en route to the battle of Yorktown.Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Revolutionary War Route and Transportation Survey in the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1781-1782, DHR-CRM Report VA-078, Richmond, 2009.

In 2009, a historic easement was placed on Windsor Shades and its surrounding 14 acres to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

In May 2026 Windsor Shades estates was soldhttps://newsroom.longandfoster.com/news/landmark-property-in-king-william-returns-to-the-pamunkey-indian-tribe-tidewater-land-reunited-with-its-original-stewards/?fbclid=IwY2xjawR-rWRleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFVd1o0eEtraUFualBEcnVwc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHmwok1aS7x_2UYAD7rGoDzl7rZgNFK8KjQEiz89j0_OxwjW0P3IzYvbkmMXn_aem_Zbbt60mhAJ9ZWKtjCaMJ2w was sold to the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, reconnecting one of Virginia’s most significant colonial and Revolutionary War landmarks with the people who originally inhabited and stewarded the land centuries before English settlement.

Windsor Shades

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