Virginia Department of Historic Resources Virginia Department of Historic Resources
For additional information, read the Nomination Form PDF
VLR Listing Date 03/17/2004
NRHP Listing Date 05/19/2004
NRHP Reference Number 04000479
This Isle of Wight County house was built for Henry Saunders around 1796. It is a story-and-a-half, three-bay, hall-parlor-plan, beaded weatherboard house. The Henry Saunders House, also known as the Eley House, is distinguished by bracketed Flemish-bond brick gable-end walls and rests on a raised brick basement. The gable roof has modern wooden shingles with a box cornice and classical bed molds at the roofline. Three gabled dormers light the south slope of the roof. A frame lean-to wing with a room and a porch was added in the 19th century, when a one-story kitchen wing was also appended to the eastern end of the dwelling. In size and in numbers and kinds of spaces, the house resembled those owned by other late-18th-century Isle of Wight farmers who fell just below the countywide and statewide elite. Some of the interior architectural elements of the Henry Saunders House are displayed at the Smithsonian Institution to illustrate the life of late-18th-century Tidewater farmers.
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
Updated: June 24, 2022
