Traveling to History: Thirty-One
Touring Virginia Beach’s Lynnhaven House
300-year-old structure undergoes preservation process
By James F. Lee
The Lynnhaven House in Virginia Beach celebrates its 300th anniversary in 2025. Currently, the house is undergoing extensive restoration, but tours are available, (all photos by James F. Lee)
Three hundred years ago, Francis Thelaball II built a four-room, brick house near the western branch of the Lynnhaven River. That structure, now known as Lynnhaven House, still stands today on a tree-covered plot of land just off Wishart Street in the Bayside section of Virginia Beach.
We got to see the house recently on a tour offered monthly by Virginia Beach Museums.
Visitors should be aware that the structure is currently undergoing a long-term preservation process. During our visit, plaster walls had been ripped out revealing the studs and exposed brick of the interior, and the floorboards were covered to protect them.
“In its present condition, Lynnhaven House offers a unique opportunity to look beneath the plaster and behind the walls to see the original framing timbers and other typically hidden details and materials,” said Dylan Wayne Spivey, Operations Specialist, Virginia Beach History Museums.
Museum Interpreter Peggy Watkins led us to the front door of the house, a compact structure with a steeply pitched roof, three projecting dormers, and massive chimneys on each end that almost seem out of proportion to the house.
When the house was built, there was plenty of forest cover on Thelaball’s 250-acre parcel of land. Sturdy oak and yellow pine trees were used for the house frame. Bricks were manufactured on site, probably by enslaved laborers.
Thelaball laid out the bricks in an English bond pattern, alternating rows of headers and stretchers, rather than the Flemish bond pattern typical of many later Virginia colonial brick houses. The builders also utilized jack arches over the windows, flat arches of wedged, vertical bricks. Exposed beams are visible under the eaves.
Thelaball, a moderately wealthy planter and shipwright, represented a growing middle class in Princess Anne County in the early 18th Century, as artisans, coopers, carpenters, shoemakers, and tanners used their wealth to acquire land.
Museum Interpreter Peggy Watkins points to the English bond brickwork dating from the original builder Francis Thelaball II. Note the vertical bricks of the jack arch over the window.
Our guide pointed out that the casement windows on the front and back are not original to the house. The originals were replaced at one point by sash windows. Later, these sashes were replaced by the casement windows we see today. One original casement window does remain, though, in the parlor.
Many families have inhabited the Lynnhaven House over time. The preservation underway today will reflect the time when Francis Thelaball, his wife Abigail, their five sons, and their four enslaved servants lived there. Also, part of this household was an apprentice shipwright. In all, 12 people shared the four rooms of this house during Thelaball’s ownership.
“Lynnhaven House offers a unique opportunity to look beneath the plaster and behind the walls...”
After viewing the exterior, we stepped through the front door and entered the hall, where the Thelaballs would greet visitors and entertain guests. People in the household slept here as well.
On our right was a fireplace and mantle original to the house. The walls were stripped of plastering showing exposed original brick that has suffered from moisture damage. In fact, part of the preservation effort is to find the moisture source causing the deterioration. A rectangle of the original plaster is still visible on the front wall.
Our guide pointed up at the ceiling to chalk numbers made on the exposed beams to help the builder line up floorboards. Incredibly, these marks date to the original construction of the house, three hundred years ago! Given that Thelaball was a shipwright and probably closely involved in the construction of the house, it is possible that he made those marks himself.
In the parlor of the Lynnhaven House, our guide explains that the cooking was probably done in the massive fireplace here. The casement window in the back is original to the house.
Light was provided into the upper chambers by dormers.
We entered the parlor, the other room on the first floor of the house. A very large fireplace here suggests that this was the main cooking area of the house, although there could have been outbuildings where cooking was done, too. Next to the fireplace is the remaining casement window original to the house. We could see that the underside of the floorboards above were smoothly planed.
While in the Parlor, our guide told us an historical oddity about Lynnhaven House: the structure never had electricity or plumbing, even throughout the 20th Century.
Back in the Hall, we climbed the pine stairway leading to the second floor. The balusters are made from white ash.
The exposed beams in the parlor ceiling show the planed floorboards above.
Upstairs the two rooms contain fireplaces and mantels original to the house. Dormer windows provide light. Like the downstairs rooms, the upstairs shows exposed brick walls, studs, and beams as the renovation continues.
The Lynnhaven House will celebrate its 300th anniversary this year. The goal of Virginia Beach Cultural Affairs Department is to open the house for regular tours once the renovation is complete. But for now, you can see the work in progress.
Virginia Beach History Museums offers Lynnhaven House Preservation Tours monthly. Advanced registration is recommended. Check website for details.
The staircase is original to the house. The balusters are made from white ash.
1755 Map of Virginia showing Princess Anne County. The Lynnhaven House is on the west bank of the Lynnhaven River, above the second S in Princess. (“A Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia …, 1755,” Retrieved from Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, https://www.loc.gov/item/74693089).
Sources
Florence Kimberly Turner. Gateway to the New World. A History of Princess Anne County, Virginia 1607-1824. Southern Historical Press, 1985.
