THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 18, 1995 TAG: 9511160160
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JEANNE MOONEY, SPECIAL TO REAL ESTATE WEEKLY
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Looking for an older home with character?
How about a Georgian-style brick manor that was built before the country was born, torched and shelled during two wars, and restored by a country gentleman for his wife?
If ``yes'' is your answer, then Marshall and Jean Ives Cox have a 200-acre estate on the Nansemond River in Suffolk to sell.
The asking price? $1,850,000. But not so fast with that checkbook. The Coxes are hoping for a buyer who will preserve the nearly 300-year-old Pembroke Farm as they and their family have.
``It's too beautiful a home not to be cared for to the utmost,'' says Mrs. Cox, who, with her husband, inherited the home five years ago from her uncle and aunt, Frank and Myrtle Warrington.
The Coxes are not the only ones enamored with their home, which was built in 1701 by a British seaman named Captain Jack. In 1950, the U.S. secretary of the interior wrote to Frank Warrington, saying the home had ``exceptional historic and architectural interest . . . worthy of careful preservation . . . ''
Warrington apparently heeded the note. In the early 1950s, he hired an architect and restored the home, which was then a brick shell gutted by fire and ravaged by decay.
Family history holds that the British burned the interior of the home during the War of 1812. Civil War soldiers skirmished there, too, riddling the brickwork with bullet marks that are still visible. And during the restoration, cannon balls apparently fired from passing warships were plucked from the facade.
Today, the setting is as pastoral as you please. A visitor drives a long, quiet country lane past harvested cotton fields to reach the home. In the driveway, a canopy of pecan trees shades the traveler.
Ahead, stands the 1 1/2-story home, symmetrical in its U-shaped floor plan down to every dormer and gable. Around back, stately oaks drop their leaves on vacant lawn chairs.
The Coxes take walks around their estate every day. They have a five-acre island to explore and a changing farm land that yields cotton, corn, wheat and peanuts. They stroll under willow, magnolia and pine trees and spy deer, egrets and swans.
Seven months a year, the Coxes eat their meals on a big, wide porch that overlooks the Nansemond. When the cold winds push them inside, it is holiday time and they celebrate with family in the dining room and den, kitchen and living room.
These are parlor-sized rooms, furnished with wide oak flooring, elaborate woodwork, marble fireplaces and chandeliers. A guest cannot help but feel steeped in history.
``This is just my sort of place,'' Mrs. Cox says. ``To know that your grandmother has walked these floors and all of your people - my heart is here.''
Still, the Coxes say they must sell. ``It's a lot to take care of,'' Cox, 73, says of the estate. He and his wife, who is 70, are in good health but they want to get their affairs in order.
Real estate broker Frederick C. Gabriel Jr. of the Virginia Beach-based Gabriel & Co. is trying to find them a buyer.
``The ideal situation would be to find a country gentleman,'' Gabriel says. Short of that, the Coxes will allow a buyer who would sell off the farm land, but preserve the home.
``Whatever they do with the land is up to them,'' Mrs. Cox says.
Selling the estate is a challenge, Gabriel concedes, not an impossibility. It's historical value, size and cost narrow the field of buyers.
``When you're talking about close to $2 million, you eliminate a lot of people,'' Gabriel says. ``But you'd be surprised how many people are capable of buying a $2 million property.''
Gabriel won't list Pembroke Farm on the usual real estate roster. He plans to promote it instead to other brokers and advertise it in newspapers in Hampton Roads, New York, Raleigh, N.C., Richmond, and Washington, D.C.
``More than likely the buyer will come from Hampton Roads,'' Gabriel says.
Several years ago, when the Warringtons owned the estate, Gabriel located a buyer. But the deal fell apart, he said, when the Warringtons withdrew.
Gabriel is resuming the search.
``Somewhere along the line a buyer is going to come along and buy it. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by Tamara Voninski, The Virginian-Pilot
Staff photo by TAMARA VONINSKI
For $1.8 million, Pembroke Farm on the Nansemond River in Suffolk
can be all yours.
by CNB