Cozy Cabins for Fall in Hunt Country
Written by Bill Kent
Carly Anthony has a name for the modest cottage with the sloping roof that hugs the side of Atoka Road: “Just perfect.”
Four years ago, the Florida-based showjumper needed a place to stay when she competed here for the first time. “I had heard about it through friends and I wasn’t sure exactly where it was. I drove down this narrow road and Nick Jenkins,” the property’s co-owner, “helped me back my truck in. I went through the door and it was like I had come home.”
Jenkins and his wife, Liz Billings, had bought and renovated the former offices of the Upperville Horse Show. As a log cabin, it housed members of Colonel John S. Moby’s raiders and sheltered a wounded cavalry officer during the 1863 Battle of Upperville. It’s since been transformed into a two-bedroom, short-term rental house with a contemporary kitchen, washer and dryer, heating and air conditioning, three bathrooms, gas grill, outdoor firepit, and internet access. Jenkins and Billings hadn’t yet listed it on Airbnb before Anthony heard the crackling wood from the original 1830s fireplace and touched the exposed walls of the log cabin.
“I sat down on the couch, my dogs cuddled up beside me, felt the warmth of the fire, and it was like I had found a home away from home,” Anthony shares.
Did staying at Atoka House help her take back so many awards, including first place in the Upperville Colt & Horse Show?
“Absolutely,” Anthony says. “With all the pressures of competition, it’s so nice to have a place to wind down and relax. I’ve stayed here at least a half-dozen times since. I like it so much I’ll stay sometimes for as much as a month because it feels so good. The yard is fenced in, so the dogs can play outside. From the deck you can watch the sunset. You can also see the Piedmont Fox Hounds and the Orange County Hunt ride through. It’s made me want to do a foxhunt.”
Among the decorations inside the house are old horseshoes that the renovators found on the property. “Everything here fits so well,” Anthony adds. “If I could live here forever, this would be my home.”
Hunt Country has plenty of short-term rentals listed on websites like Airbnb and Vrbo. They range from multi-bedroom houses to converted barns and tree houses perched high enough off the ground so the only neighbors have wings.
But there is nothing like the cabin that Nöel Martin and Stephen Lamb visit every year on their anniversary.
The Falls Church couple married in 2021 at a Bluemont vineyard. “I was told that we would go someplace special for our honeymoon,” Martin says. “Stephen described it to me but I couldn’t picture it.”
Built in the 1960s as a sanctum sanctorum for philanthropist, agriculturalist, and sportsman John Dana Archbold on Upperville’s Foxlease Farm, the cabin sits on a quarter-acre island in the middle of a lake and is accessible only by a narrow footbridge.
According to the cabin’s current owner, Julia O’Regan, the footbridge was once a drawbridge. “There are a lot of stories about Archbold,” O’Regan recalls. “One of them is that he designed and had the cabin built strictly for himself, away from all distraction. He’d pull up the drawbridge when he didn’t want to be disturbed. Among the upgrades we’ve done over the years was replacing the original drawbridge with something sturdier. We’ve also added more amenities to the cabin. But there’s no improving the setting. It really is quite remarkable.”
Martin agrees with that description, adding that “words fail me. It is isolated, but you’re not alone. There are swans nesting in a corner of the lake. One of my favorite things to do is sit outside on the wraparound porch with a glass of wine, bundled up in a blanket because it can get kind of breezy out there, watching the swans float by while our dog jumps in the water. Hoku’s a goldendoodle. He can make a big splash, but nothing bothers those swans.”
Martin adds that she and Lamb like to make a bonfire at night and listen to the geese fly overhead. “We love the wildness of it. It’s kind of like glamping, but better. It’s the only place I can think of where just sitting and experiencing nature is so satisfying.”
If you want to stay in a tree house, the man to call is Donnie Walker. “I built my first when I was 7,” he says, admitting that he had a little help from his father. “Now I’m waiting on the permits for my fifth. It’s going to be fully accessible, [with an] open floor plan [and] an elevator.”
Walker now owns or manages 30 short-term Hunt Country rentals from a Waterford office. He also sits on the Loudoun County tourism board and is a proud advocate of the region’s natural splendor. “Especially now, with the leaves turning, the air has a bit of a chill, and, midweek at least, you don’t have to wait on lines at some of the restaurants,” Walker notes. “We live in the most beautiful place on earth. I’m a hiker and there’s nothing like getting out into the forests and feeling it all around you.”
Before he got into the short-term rental business, Walker did historic renovations. “I made a point of using as much of the original material as possible. I still do,” Walker notes. “I own a sustainable forest where I get a lot of my lumber. I’m always looking for things that can be repurposed. It may be just a romantic getaway for most people, but I want them to get an appreciation for where they are.”
One of the places is an 1869 cabin on the eastern slope of Catoctin Mountain in Mount Pleasant, on 25 acres in what was known as Scattersville after the Civil War. Walker and his father spent three months renovating what was once a schoolhouse for a post-Civil War community of formerly enslaved African Americans. “When my dad and I were working on it, I got a feeling for the place.”
For Joey Ugast, staying in the cabin was a birthday getaway for him and his girlfriend. Raised in Fairfax, Ugast visited Hunt Country with his parents, where he learned to appreciate historic structures. “I took historic preservation courses at the College of Charleston,” Ugast shares. “Each time I go to Middleburg, I try a different place. The cabin up Bald Hill Road was really nice in an off-the-beaten-path kind of way. I built a fire in the firepit outside. I cooked dinner. We went to wineries, had breakfast in Leesburg. I walked around outside a bit, but I didn’t go far because that was serious terrain.”
He had no idea, he says, of the history of the house and its surroundings. “But I got a feeling around the place that so much must have happened before me. Now that I know something about it, [I] respect that, and honor it.” ML
Featured photo: Atoka House. Photo by Gracie Savage.
Published in the November 2024 issue of Middleburg Life.