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Survey of
Historic Sites and Buildings

	GREENWAY COURT Virginia
Location: 1 mile south of White Post, near Va. 277, Clarke County.

Ownership and Administration (1961). Private.

Significance. Greenway Court was for 30 years the home of Lord Thomas Fairfax, the only English peer residing in the Colonies, a friend to young George Washington, and proprietor of a 5-million-acre grant of Virginia lands. Inheriting the proprietary through his mother, daughter of Lord Thomas Culpeper, Fairfax was forced into a long defense of his lands by a formidable political attack that began in 1733 and continued intermittently until after his death in 1781. He took up residence at Greenway Court in 1752, to safeguard his interests, and lived out his years there in comfort, although on a scale far below that enjoyed by the average upper class Virginian. In truth, the estate was never completed. The projected manor house was never built, and Fairfax resided in another house that was planned as a hunting lodge. From 1762 until his death he maintained the land office for his Northern Neck Proprietary at Greenway Court. Washington visited there a number of times, first in 1748 as a member of a surveying party and later in his capacity as a large landed proprietor himself. Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, spent some time at Greenway Court during the Shawnee campaign of 1774, and a number of other prominent Virginians were there at one time or another. Fairfax, a leading citizen of Virginia during the third quarter of the 18th century, had an important influence on the careers of Washington and, indirectly, John Marshall, whose father also did some survey work for the proprietor. The land speculation that centered at Greenway Court for more than a decade was typical of the preoccupation with frontier lands that touched all Virginians in the years just before the American Revolution.

Present Appearance (1961). Of the buildings existing during Fairfax's lifetime, the limestone land office, probably built in 1762, and restored in 1930, still stands and is in fair condition. It is a thick-walled structure 28.4 by 18.4 feet, with a heavy hewnboard door and narrow shuttered windows. The "hunting lodge" has been replaced by a two-story brick farmhouse built in 1828. The property is now occupied by tenants, but appears to be well maintained. [74]