Belle Meade Mansion is a very interesting place to visit if you like late 19th century mansions and want to see how the other half lived. What set’s this house apart is that unlike nearby mansions where they grew crops like cotton, this was a house with a major horse farm, where people would come from miles away to appraise and buy horses. And of course one of the things you do when you are horse people is you show off your horse flesh by riding around in fancy carriages, so we will visit the carriage house in our next post. You may well ask, why the focus on outside buildings? Well because the local Hysterical Society will not allow indoor pictures in such historic houses (including the Hermitage too) because they haven’t managed to get into the modern era where digital cameras without flash can’t possibly harm anything. But they will say— ‘but if we allow everyone to take some shots, it will slow down the tours, and we need to rush people through these houses, especially during high season’. Sigh….. This is Historical Societies behaving badly, especially when nice pictures posted on the internet will just increase their trade and revenues. But I digress.
The front door
The gardener’s cottage
Where you live first while making your fortune and building your mansion.
Now that’s a water bucket— 150 gallons worth.
Hickory trees— more to come at the Hermitage. And….. indoor plumbing towards the end of the 19th century…!
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