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By Meredith Gorfein
Rappahannock News Writer
Polly and Russ Scoville of Flint Hill will celebrate their first anniversary this September — the first anniversary of living in a house that was designed for them with the promise that it would express their soul. Everything about the house suits them and daily as they and the house live together, more “delights” are found.
Their two-story threelevel house is perched on a rise with what looks like a dogwood forest dropping away from the house on two sides.
Initially the most arresting aspect of the house is the inverted V-shaped roof lines, somehow reminiscent of sails on a ship or two seagulls in flight.
The house is made up of three wings. The main house and the most spectacular is a 16 by 32 open truss timber frame structure which rises to 26 feet at the peak. This space is the “great room” containing the living room and kitchen. Off the back of the kitchen is a large screened-in porch which looks over the forest.
The middle wing houses the entryway (not even remotely a “mud room”) where shoes are removed and jackets hung. Also in this wing is a bath and laundry. The corner of the basement in this wing holds the circulation center containing the heat pump, and all the necessary electric, plumbing, air conditioning, and ductwork for the whole house.
The smallest wing, jutting out from the middle is a lovely guest room with family furniture going back 200 years.
Polly and Russ Scoville named their home Seaway House after the timbers which form the structure of their house.
These old Douglas fir timbers came from the St Lawrence seaway where they had been used as a floating “cribbage” to keep logs from going into the shipping channel.
They had been floating in the water for 130 years. Large 30-foot long, two and a half foot square pieces of timber linked together with chains formed rafts which loggers stood on and polled the logs out of jams and off to the mills. Timbers-Scovilles
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Twenty-five years ago when Miriam Harris was the president of VABF (Virginia Association of Biologic Farmers) Russ Scoville served on the Board with Lyt Wood, Diana Bird and Richard Abell. The Scovilles at the time had a two-acre farm in Alexandria where they raised goats, ducks and chickens. (Their daughter still lives on that farm.)
A friend, Jim Yates, bought land from Ms. Harris and the Scovilles bought 20 acres from him. That was ten years ago. The land sat.
Finally, two years ago, the time was right. The Scovilles had been looking and thinking and had made the decision about the kind of house they wanted. It would be a Blue Ridge Timberwrights house. Blue Ridge Timberwrights (BRT) are out of Christiansburg near Blacksburg. They had seen their houses and designs in magazines, talked to them and had visited several houses.
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