GPS Coordinates: Latitude: 37.98481, Longitude: -76.71679

Near Warsaw, Virginia: At 53.7 m. on State 3 is a junction with State 203. Left here to a private road, 0.6 mile, and R. to BLADENSFIELD, 1.2 mile.

Bladensfield Plantation is located a half-mile south of the Kinsale Road. The ancient graveyard was located "at the foot of the garden," where the few readable markers included Mr. and Mrs. John Peck and their daughter Alice. The earlier owners of Bladensfield, John and Martha Jenkins, were thought to have been buried there also with some members of their family and servants.

"The original Bladensfield Estate, of 1,000 acres, was patented by John Jenkins in 1653, and the present house was built for Jenkins by Nicholas Rochester, who came from England in 1689. At Jenkins' death, in 1719, Bladensfield was added to the Nomini Hall estate. The house is a large frame building on a brick basement. The walls of nogging covered with clapboards rise two stories to a gabled roof, which has several dormers. The largest of the dormers is over the entrance. Mantels and cornices are hand-carved, and the flooring is dowel-pinned. The house is privately owned and is not open to the public."
From the website of the National Park Service.

"Bladensfield is one of the oldest houses in the Northern Neck, and is a place of great interest. It is set back from the highway, in a lawn of beautiful trees and shrubbery, through which winds the old, old drive-way. The flower garden back of the house is one of the beauty spots of the Northern Neck. The Ward family, who now own and occupy Bladensfield, take pride in preserving the grounds as they were over two centuries ago....
The original name of the house was 'Billingsgate' and it was not given the title 'Bladensfield' until 1847. The basement of the dwelling is brick-walled, but the walls of the house above the ground are of noggin. Some of the original beaded weather-boarding remains. On the interior are hand-carved mantels and cornice, and paneled wainscot, of a different color in each room. The doors have 'HL' hinges, 'to keep the witches out'. From the hall ceiling still hangs the lamp used in Colonial days. Through the facing of the rear door is the Indian peep-hole. This door has no lock... it never had any. A hard-timbered bar secures it. It is the identical bar that held the door closed against the Indians in the late sixteen hundreds...."
(From "Historic Northern Neck of Virginia" (1934) by Henry Ragland Eubank.)

◦"Bladensfield is one of the very old places in Virginia. One of the two oldest that he knew of, was the surmise of our State Historian and Director of Archaeology when he visited it. Other experts have confirmed his testimony. There is a pleasant mention of the old place in Lancaster's "Historical Homes and Churches of Virginia." Naturally, about a spot that has been the home of many individuals, stories of human interest have clustered-stories that illustrate the ideas and manners of their day and also the surge of our humanity, forever moving, yet forever the same. As the farm was deeded before the present counties of Westmoreland and Richmond were determined upon, the front gate and one of the upper fields are in Westmoreland, the house and the rest of the farm in Richmond County. According to the Guide Book of the Northern Neck, the house was built about the year 1690, by Nicholas Rochester, of the family of Rochesters who founded the city of Rochester in New York. Tradition says the place was for a time the home of George Eskridge, guardian of Mary Ball, George Washington's mother. We know that it was, during their married lives, the home of Ann Tasker Carter (daughter of Councillor Carter of Nomini Hall) and her husband, John Peck, who succeeded as tutor at Nomini Hall, Philip Vickers Fithian, famous for his diary of his stay in the family of Councillor Carter. Mr. and Mrs. Peck and their daughter Alice lie buried in the "Peck Graveyard" at the foot of the garden at Bladensfield. In 1842 the place was deeded to the Reverend William Norvell Ward by Harriet Peck (then Mrs. Captain Lucius M. Davis), only surviving daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Peck. There Mr. Ward and his wife brought up twelve children. The place still continues in the family." (From The Children of Bladensfield (1978) by Evelyn D. Ward.)

The Bladensfield mansion was over 300 years old when it burned to the ground in November 1996.