Please click on image for further details.

Nick Churton of Mayfair International Realty peels back the centuries at a magnificent estate in the Hudson Valley, New York.

Broker: Houlihan Lawrence

Agent: John Friend

1768 was a busy year on both sides of the Atlantic. In the British parliament the Townshend Acts were passed imposing duties on glass, lead, paints, paper and tea imported into the colonies. Many American patriots including Samuel Adams viewed this taxation as an abuse of power, resulting in the passage of agreements to limit imports from Britain. That year also Captain James Cook departed from Plymouth, England on the first of his three voyages, to the Pacific Ocean and the eventual first-recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands.

That same year in pre-American revolution Staatsburg – a small hamlet in Dutchess County, New York that had been founded by English in the seventeenth century and then settled by the Dutch – a new farmhouse was built. Set close to Rhinebeck in the extraordinary beauty of the Hudson Valley the farm must have seemed a world away from the fast-developing business and political worlds of New York and Boston.

It remains much the same today. At first sight there is little here to distinguish the twenty-first century from the eighteenth. From the outside the original building can have altered little. Other buildings, put up over subsequent years, only add to the period feel.

But things have changed commercially. No longer a farm in the true meaning of the word, Old Stone Farm has been developed into a luxury country inn, retreat, horse farm and wellness centre within 236 acres of grassland and forest. Keeping up with the times has been something of a speciality at Old Stone Farm over the years.

Things have altered internally as well. Each of the buildings, the farmhouse, guesthouse and mill house, has been given complete renovation that maintains the integrity of the Colonial style but provides a contemporary look, feel and specification. Additionally, a ten-room inn built in 2010 and a magnificent, world-class horse barn with eighteen stalls and indoor ring with viewing galleries offer a wonderful range of options and facilities that also include a spa and yoga barn.

Whatever the use or whichever the century the Old Stone Farm seems to offer the perfect answer.