Mountain View Farm, also known as Spencer Plantation and Mountain View Farm at Rebec Vineyards, is a historic home and farm located near Clifford,
Amherst County, Virginia
Amherst County is a county, located in the Piedmont region and near the center of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The county is part of the Lynchburg Metropolitan Statistical Area, and its county seat is also named Amhers ...
. The property includes an 18th-century mansion, built about 1777, a 19th-century cottage and five other supporting buildings. The main house is a standard timber frame, two-story, three-bay,
I-house
The I-house is a vernacular architecture, vernacular house type, popular in the United States from the colonial period onward. The I-house was so named in the 1930s by Fred Kniffen, a cultural geographer at Louisiana State University who was a sp ...
with a rear ell addition. It is sheathed in weatherboard with end chimneys. It was moved to its present site in 1831. The cottage is a one-room building with a lean-to shed addition. It was originally used as a doctor's office by Dr. Paul Carrington Cabell, and probably dates to the 1830s or 40s. Also on the property are the contributing well house, a playhouse (originally a
chicken coop
Poultry farming is the form of animal husbandry which raises poultry, domesticated birds such as chickens, Domestic duck, ducks, turkey (domesticated), turkeys and domesticated goose, geese to produce chicken meat, meat or Egg as food, eggs for ...
), a
smokehouse
A smokehouse (North American) or smokery (British) is a building where meat or fish is curing (food preservation), cured with Smoking (cooking), smoke. The finished product might be stored in the building, sometimes for a year or more.ice house,
carriage house
A ''carriage house'', also called a ''remise'' or ''coach house'', is a term used in North America to describe an outbuilding that was originally built to house horse-drawn carriages and their related tack. Carriage houses were often two ...
, and a chicken coop. an ''Accompanying photo'' /ref> The property has been home to Rebec Vineyards since 1987.
It was added to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...