Virginia’s colonial glebe houses normally served as residences for parish parsons and usually exhibited the same care in design, execution, and detailing found in the churches themselves. The Hungars Parish glebe house in Northampton County, with its glazed-header brickwork and interior paneling, well illustrates this high level of quality and is one of the least changed of the state’s colonial glebe houses. It probably dates soon after 1745, the year in which the General Assembly authorized the building of glebe houses. As a result of the disestablishment of the Anglican Church following the Revolution, the Commonwealth ordered the house to be sold by the parish. The vestry protested, and the dispute dragged on until the state took title in 1859. The Glebe of Hungars Parish property was sold into private ownership in 1870. The house was restored in the 1970s after standing empty for some thirty years.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia