Battle of Fredericksburg • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • Facts • Armies
Chatham Manor house and its grounds are open to the public. The grounds as you see them today are very different from what was here at the time of the Civil War.
The parking area was the rear of the house in the 1800s. The formal gardens and most of the outbuildings that surround them did not exist. (see the “A Changed Landscape” wayside marker)
The gardens were created in the 1920s, and this side of the house became the main entryway. Ellen Biddle Shipman, America’s foremost female landscape architect, created the gardens. They have been modified from her original design, but many elements are still there.
Entryway to the gardens and house.
Classical sculptures and rose arbors were major elements in the design of the garden
The original front of the house as it existed in the 1800s faced the Rappahannock River and the terrace that overlooked the town of Fredericksburg.
View back toward what was the front entrance to Chatham Manor during the Civil War, from the terrace above the river. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln all visited here.
The view from the house (above, looking across the Rappahannock River to the skyline of Fredericksburg) and terrace was outstanding, and the elevation caught cool breezes.
The two Catawpa trees on the northwest side of the house are known to have been here since before the Civil War.
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