Whole house near Middleburg, VA in Piedmont horse country

The main house began as a simple farmhouse in 1775. When our family purchased the property in 1833, we added the Colonial front and wings. The house is furnished with family pieces that have been collected over the years, and an abundance of family portraits adorns the walls.

Welbourne was the home of Richard Henry Dulany, the great-great-great-grandfather of the current innkeepers. Dulany founded the nation’s oldest foxhunting club, The Piedmont Fox Hounds, in 1840, and the oldest horse show, the Upperville Colt & Horse Show, in 1853.

In the 1930s, writers F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe stayed at Welbourne at the behest of their legendary editor, Maxwell Perkins. One of Perkins’ closest friends was Elizabeth Lemmon of Welbourne (their letters were published in "As Ever Yours") and he wrote after one visit, “It’s as if I had drunk the milk of Paradise once and seen an enchanted place.” Fitzgerald wrote “Her Last Case,” a short story published in The Saturday Evening Post that used Welbourne as its setting. Wolfe also used the house as a setting in "The Hound of Darkness," calling it "Malbourne": "The house in its general design is not unlike the one at Mount Vernon...yet surpasses it in its warmth and naturalness. An air of ease and homely comfort has pervaded every line.” He goes on, "The place is warm with life, instantly familiar the moment that a stranger enters it."

In 2001, Crazy Like a Fox, a feature film based loosely on the family and the father of the current innkeepers, was filmed at Welbourne. It is a comedy-drama about a man who is evicted from his eighth-generation family home and fights to win it back. The film stars Tony Award-winner Roger Rees and two-time Academy Award-nominee Mary McDonnell and was written and directed by Richard Squires, a long-time Welbourne tenant.

The historic house is a National Historic Landmark and is on the Virginia Register of Historic Places.

Our guests will enjoy peaceful afternoons in rocking chairs on the front porch and a cozy fire in the Parlour in the winter. The 520 acres of fields, woods and streams, including Goose Creek, beckon walkers, hikers, horse-lovers and naturalists.

As guests stroll around the grounds, they will encounter numerous outbuildings – a greenhouse, billiard house, carriage house, and farm office which are now residences. The Old Dwelling, a circa-1750 log cabin, pre-dates the main house. A smokehouse, springhouse, and icehouse also dot the grounds. The old schoolhouse still stands in the garden.