Virginia's Once-Thriving Victorian Mansion Is Now An Abandoned Piece Of History Hidden In A Golf Course

Located just over an hour away from Richmond, you'll find The Manor Golf Club in Farmville, a funky Virginia college town with a bustling arts scene and historic sites. Like at any golf course, you can expect to encounter manicured lawns and carefully planned obstacles here. But it features something else you likely wouldn't anticipate: an abandoned home with a storied past. Boasting 14 rooms, the Dunnington Mansion is a multi-floor abode whose current construction dates back to 1897. Featuring a red brick exterior and a prominent turret, the Dunnington Mansion, originally founded in 1748 as a farm known as Poplar Hill, is a rather stately structure — despite being deteriorated by time, nature, and neglect.

How and why would such a place be deserted? Well, it wasn't abandoned overnight. The property first belonged to a man named Richard Woodson, and Poplar Hill remained under his family's ownership for just over a century before being sold. By the late 19th century, it ended up in the possession of the Dunnington family. It was during this time that the Dunnington Mansion reached its present-day Victorian-style configuration, complete with an attached greenhouse.

However, the Dunnington family is not where the property's story ends. The home changed ownership in 1960 and was lived in until 2000, when it was sold to create The Manor Golf Club. According to The Farmville Herald, the house was abandoned in 2004, when plans to include it as part of the site fell through due to financial reasons. Now, golfers can only catch distant glimpses of the mansion's derelict beauty as they play.

There are many once-thriving places in Virginia that now sit abandoned, and Farmville's Dunnington Mansion is among them — yet, despite that, it's still part of private property. That is to say, don't book tee time at The Manor Golf Club and expect to do any urban exploring in between taking swings on the course. The Dunnington Mansion isn't entirely off limits, though. Thanks to the Dunnington Mansion Foundation, which aims to protect and raise awareness about the historic structure, interested parties can rent the property. There's a catch, though: This offering is only for artists and creatives, such as photographers who want to feature the Dunnington Mansion's decayed opulence in their work.

Tours are occasionally held on the property, as well, where visitors can wander and photograph the property for a fee of $54.69 on Eventbrite. A YouTube video documenting one such tour shows the home as largely empty, with dilapidated rooms full of debris and remnants of old fixtures and building materials. Speaking with The Farmville Herald, Heather Beach, president of the Dunnington Mansion Foundation, explained, "These tours are helping us raise money for the foundation, so that we can do things like bring in preservation specialists to give us an idea of what the next move might be for the house."

As Beach notes, the foundation does not own the house, although ownership is its end goal so it can ensure the property's continued survival. If you're interested in attending an event at the Dunnington Mansion, check out the foundation's Facebook page, as well as the website of Virginia-based photographer John Plashal; he's the one who hosts the tours. If you're interested in checking out a similar place in Virginia, read about Matildaville, a hauntingly beautiful site hidden in Great Falls Park.