The Hill sisters decked out in 18th century costumes and wigs, Elizabeth, left, Evelyn, center, and either another sister or a friend. Elizabeth aspired to be an actress. Courtesy of the Hill House. One a pretty Sunday morning in April 1918, five sisters from Portsmouth, with their brother Willie at the wheel, drove out into the flat, scrubby Princess Anne countryside. Their destination was a farmhouse for sale on the Lynnhaven River.
“As we neared,” Evelyn Collins Hill recalled, “I will never forget our drive through the beautiful lane of dogwoods, veritably laden with snowy blossoms, a sight to enchant any city dweller. As we entered the farm we saw a house standing in a field absolutely alone. . . .”
“On account of the heavy brush we could only see glimpses of the Lynnhaven River in front of the house, but to the north, we had a good view of our battleships which happened to be anchored that day in the Lynnhaven Roads, it being then 1918, war time. We thought the location beautiful, and decided right away to buy the place.”
They closed on the deal the next day and named the place “Sea Breeze” because of the intoxicating winds sweeping the waterfront.
Here begins chapter two in the complex, compelling – and to my mind just a little bit sad – story of the Hill family, the inheritors of an extravagantly decorated 1807 home in Portsmouth who migrated to the countryside, turned it into a horticultural showpiece that gave the neighborhood its name.
You’ll recall that the Portsmouth Historical Association is seeking to restore the Hill House on North Street in Olde Towne and reopen it as a museum. The Hill sisters gave the house, with all its furnishings, it to the association about a half century ago. They were now country ladies.
After seeing the framed picture of three of the sisters cavorting in 18th century fancy-dress costumes and wigs, I had to learn more.
The other day I had a chance to go out to Sea Breeze, which has been handsomely preserved and restored. It’s now owned by Jon and Susan Gorog, who have made some major changes but preserved the character of the almost-100-year-old house. They’ve also deeply researched its history.
The farm of some 200 acres was part of the “glebe” that was once owned by the first Lynnhaven Parish – now Old Donation Episcopal Church, the Gorogs say. Ernest Browne of Norfolk bought the land in 1912 and built the house for his son. The property was sold in 1918 to William Collins Hill, who had recovered the family’s waning fortune by selling cotton to northern textile mills. He turned it over to his five sisters.
None of the six children ever married, and a memoir by Marian Harris, a recent owner of the house, explains why. One of the sisters, she said, was not “quite right,” a mental illness that had kept her more or less confined to an upstairs room when they lived in Portsmouth. All six of the Hills, she wrote, “believed that it might be hereditary and chose not to marry. They devoted the love not bestowed on husband and children to plants and flowers.”
Indeed, the five sisters – who each had her own garden house on the property – turned the place into a horticultural paradise. As Evelyn Hill once put it, “each blade of grass, each petal and blossom, had endeared itself to us as cherished friends.” They received numerous awards for their gardens, and worldwide fame brought gardeners from around the globe to this spot on the river.
Time of course took its toll. As the sisters died and became frail the house and garden, with no heirs, were neglected.
After the last of the sisters died in1965, the land was sold at auction to Seay Development Co., and subdivided into what is today known as Sea Breeze Farm.
But the old house needed attention. Lots of it. Harris wrote about “the despair and desolation that looked through its broken windows, hanging gutters and the jungle or vines and weeds that engulfed it” when she and her husband bought the property. The house had become a party place for teens. Furniture and even stair railings were vandalized.
There were rumors of ghosts there after the Harrises, William and Marian, chased away intruders. They had lay awake at night and then, when the youths appeared, “I went racing through the house screeching, ‘Shoot them, William. Shoot them,’” while her husband, who had snuck around the house, fired a gun into the air. The vandals never returned.
The ghosts and ladies are gone, but there’s lots of history there, including street names, like the one leading to the old house, Five Hill Trail. The reference isn’t to hills, but to Hills.
