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By Kevin Allen
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
When Norman and Sandra CartwrightBrown bought a historic home on Slate Mills Road in 1979, they had never been to Rappahannock County before, Sandra had. never stayed in a bed and breakfast and there were no bed and breakfasts in the county. Oh, how things have changed.
At the time, the couple had a second home at Lake Winnipesaukee, N.H., and they were searching for a weekend home that was closer to their year-round residence in Chevy Chase, Md. An old house, located about eight miles south of Sperryville, seemed to fit the bill.
In 1981, looking for a project to fill their newly emptied nest, the couple opened the Conyers House Country Inn and Stable as a bed and breakfast. It was the only bed and breakfast in the county when it opened, which seems hard to believe 25 years later. Rappahannock's robust hospitality industry currently includes at least 20 bed and breakfasts and country inns.
“When the children went away to college, I thought, Well, we can try this,’ “ Sandra said. “And. bingo! We started a whole industry.”
Sandra said she often tells guests, “I had never even been to a B&B before opening Conyers, but it seemed to me it couldn’t be too unlike motherhood. The skills are the same: tolerance, humor, good organization, flexibility and financial good sense. “
Sandra said she and Norman kept the house in Chevy Chase for several years while business at Conyers steadily improved and other B&Bs sprung up around the county. Finally, they decided to complete their move to Rappahannock.
“Slowly, it just grew and grew and other people jumped on the bandwagon,” she said.
Fronr commune to inn
‘ Sandra said she was told the oldest part of the house was built in 1790 by a man named Bartholomew Conyers - hence the name of the inn. In its early days in the first half of the 19th century, the building housed a general store < called Conyers’ Old Store and later Fink’s General Store.
The property passed through multiple hands and underwent several additions before becoming a hippie commune and falling into
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