Spring Villa

Yesterday I went to an old plantation home site called Spring Villa, south of Opelika. I had read about the house a few weeks ago, and when I went by my mom's to water plants, I casually asked if she had ever heard of it. "Yeah, want to go?" she asked, and it surprised me how readily she wanted to drop everything and go (I think I had caught her walking down the hall and assumed she was about to do something).

I got my camera, and we got in her car. She drove the long way, down Moore's Mill Road to the outskirts of town.

"We went swimming there sometimes a long time ago. They had a spring-fed swimming pool. It was really cold, and you really didn't want to swim there unless it was blazing hot outside. But even then, the pool was in the shade and it was still too cold."

"When was the last time you went there, like the 80s?"

"Oh no, probably the 70s. Maybe the 60s. I was a kid."

There were big fields of pasture and cows, lots of trailers and brick country houses.

"Do you remember how to get there?" I asked.

"Yes, there's a sign. It says Spring Villa."

"You mean, there was a sign that said Spring Villa in the 60s. Who knows if its there now."

She ignored me and kept driving. Soon enough, there was the Spring Villa sign. When we turned down that road, there were road signs warning of "catastrophic sink holes" (My dad told me at dinner later that night, that a few years ago a part of the road collapsed and fell in 100 feet). I was wondering if at any point the road would cave in and we'd die. But then, I saw houses and cars and tractors that seemed to be used by people unafraid of being swallowed by the earth, and I felt better.

And then, there it was, Spring Villa, as I had seen in the photos:

Spring Villa house, home of the Yonge family, built in 1850.

I was surprised by how small the house was. It's tall but very narrow. And, as seen in most photos, it appears as one building, but it's actually two buildings set perpendicular together, and originally joined by a second-story walkway that's now no longer there. 

I read that this style is called carpenter gothic. There's another carpenter gothic house in downtown Opelika, but when I took a photo of it a few months back, the owner came out and started raving at me and demanding money for photos, even though I took it from the street and never stepped on his property. So, I just deleted those photos and left. Spring Villa is much more friendly to guests. It's a public park now, and you can enter for free and wander as you wish.

On the grounds we also saw the old swimming pool, now closed, which had separate little restrooms for men and women built like little carpenter gothic miniatures. There was also an RV park at the rear of the property, a playground and picnic area, and a house used by the property manager. The Spring Villa house itself looks like it's only used for reserved events.

Mom and I also crossed the road and went a path up a hill through the woods. There we found graves, side by side, of father and son Yonge. According to legend, one of the Yonges was a harsh slave owner and was murdered by one of his slaves. There's a spiral staircase in the house with a niche by the 13th step. The slave hid in the niche and stabbed the owner to death as he passed by. Apparently the 13th step was stained in blood until the 1950s, when it was replaced because it had rotted. The house is supposed to be haunted.