Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270219
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WARM SPRINGS LENGTH: Medium
`SOMMERSBY' PUSHES MANSION BACK IN TIME
Pam Stidham is in no hurry to watch "Sommersby," even though most of the motion picture was filmed at the antebellum plantation and mansion where she lives."I'm not ready yet to be reminded of what they did here," said Stidham, who has spent eight years trying to save history and make history by restoring Warwickton in a pilot project with the U.S. Forest Service.
In the movie, Richard Gere's character, Jack Sommersby, finds Warwickton ravaged by Yankee soldiers after the Civil War. To make the scenes more realistic, movie crews put holes and cracks in the walls and brushed paint over joint compound to make it peel.
"The whole damn house is falling apart," Gere tells Jodie Foster's character, Laurel Sommersby.
In reality, Stidham and her husband, Ron, found Warwickton in a similar state while they were driving around Bath County's Hidden Valley looking for historic sites. The mansion, considered one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in Western Virginia, was crumbling after being used as a hunt club and hay barn for decades. The roof was leaking, and the four noble white columns were pockmarked by woodpeckers.
Judge Jacob Warwick, one of the region's founding fathers, built the mansion in 1848 using slave labor and red bricks from nearby clay pits.
"In a sense, Warwickton embodies the entire history of Western Virginia and the frontier experience," Forest Service archaeologist Bill Tolley has said.
George Washington National Forest acquired the 6,400-acre tract in 1965 for recreational use, but the foresters had no use for the mansion. After five years of pleading and bureaucratic maneuvering, the Stidhams persuaded the Forest Service to issue them a special use permit that spokesman Terry Smith said is unprecedented for the agency.
In return for restoring the historic structure, the Stidhams will be allowed to operate their commercial venture for 30 years.
The Stidhams plan to open Warwickton to the public in late spring as a bed-and-breakfast inn and a functioning farm, with horse trails, hunting expeditions, trout fishing and an interpretive museum.
Pam Stidham said she appreciates the film's production for bringing millions of dollars into Bath County and for constructing outbuildings and paying for phone service to be brought into the remote valley.
And when her dog, a great Dane-bull mastiff mix, got sick during the filming and had to be treated for 11 days at a veterinary hospital, the crew took up a donation to pay the bill.
But she said the movie production "set us back nine months to a year."
They could do no restoration work during the six-month production and have been working since September getting the mansion in the same condition it was in before the crews came, she said.
"It was pretty rough," Stidham said, adding that she also was a pest to the production company at times. "They don't want to remember us and we don't want to remember them."
Smith said Stidham's meticulous nature added to the consternation.
For example, a set artist applied nine coats of paint to one of the fireplace mantels before getting the faded-marble look that the director wanted. Stidham then spent days stripping off all nine coats and applying the color used when the house was built.
"When the movie production wanted to do something that was not historically correct, it bothered her quite a bit, Smith said.
"This woman is in love with this house," he said. "It's like a mommy with her first baby, and she didn't like it when other people were touching it."
Stidham said she doubted whether the movie would generate much interest in her bed-and-breakfast. There was no listing of Warwickton in the credits, she said, and the mansion only began to look good in the closing scenes when actors were applying a new coat of paint.