The Winchester Food Tour today features another historic home known as The Boyd Home and also known as “Fair Mount”.  The property is located at 311 Fairmont Avenue in Winchester.  In some of our earlier historic homes posts we described the early creation of the Town of Winchester, and those purchasing an “in-lot” (what is now known as the Historic District downtown), also required the conveyance of an “out-lot” that typically is found in the areas just around the downtown historic region.  This property was just such an out-lot, Lot 67 which accompanied the purchase of Lot 10 conveyed to a John Hope by Lord Fairfax in 1753.

Now, ironically enough, for reasons that are presumed to be for preservation of nature or use as pasture, building on out-lots was expressly prohibited with these early conveyances.  However, those restrictions faded away in the years after the revolution, and this home was originally built in approximately 1812.  Lot 10 in the original conveyance was a half-acre lot on the west side of Loudoun Street and Lot 67 was a five-acre lot on what is now Fairmont Avenue and on the southern quarter of the property.

Another of the many gorgeous structures in and around the Winchester, this home can be seen as you are coming into town from the north along Fairmont Avenue just before the bend onto Piccadilly into the downtown area.  According to one our greatest sources of historical information about Winchester, Virginia, it is William Greenway Russell who recounts that the large stone building at 311 Fairmont Avenue was built in approximately 1812 by Mr. Joseph Tidball.  Since that time, many renovations and improvements have made it into the stunning, sprawling home that can be seen today.

The Boyd name attached to this house comes after several property transfers, culminating in its acquisition by Dr. Phillip W. Boyd in 1929 from the heirs of one Mary E. Miller   It is Dr. Boyd who is responsible for the extensive renovations and additions that brought the home up to what we see today.  This home, too, is both on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register.  To read more about the history of this home, visit the National Register’s direct link here:  Fair Mount, 311 Fairmont Avenue, Winchester, Virginia.

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