🏛️ CulturalDay trip · from Richmond, VA
The James River Plantations — Berkeley, Shirley & Sherwood Forest
The great houses strung along Route 5 between Richmond and Williamsburg form one of the oldest continuously worked landscapes in English-speaking America, a corridor of eighteenth-century brick mansions and tidewater farmland facing the broad James River. This single-day journey visits three of the finest. Berkeley Plantation was the site of the first official English Thanksgiving in 1619 — two years before Plymouth — the birthplace of a president and a signer of the Declaration, and the spot where 'Taps' was composed during the Civil War. Shirley Plantation, founded in 1613 and still owned by the same family eleven generations on, is the oldest plantation in Virginia, its 1738 mansion crowned by a famous 'flying' staircase. Sherwood Forest was the retirement home of President John Tyler and remains, at over 300 feet, reputedly the longest frame house in America. Between them lies a country lunch and long views over the tidal river.
Day 1 — Berkeley Plantation & the First ThanksgivingDay 1 — Shirley Plantation & Sherwood Forest
Day 1 — Charles City County, VA
Day 1 — Charles City County, VA
🚗 2 hr 22 min driving📍 4 stops
🌅
Morning
🚗
Drive
Richmond, VA → Berkeley Plantation
45 min8:00 AM → 8:45 AM
Berkeley Plantation
★ 4.7Berkeley claims a remarkable density of American firsts. On December 4, 1619, the settlers who stepped ashore here observed what is recognized as the first official Thanksgiving in English America, a full year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. The 1726 Georgian mansion — among the oldest three-story brick houses in Virginia — was the ancestral home of Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the birthplace of President William Henry Harrison and the ancestral seat of President Benjamin Harrison. During the Civil War the grounds became a vast Union encampment where, in the summer of 1862, General Daniel Butterfield composed the melody of 'Taps.' Guided house tours in period dress interpret the rooms, and the terraced boxwood gardens sweep grandly down to the James.
8:45 AM📍 See location
🍽️
Lunch
🚗
Drive
Berkeley Plantation → Charles City Courthouse area
12 min9:45 AM → 9:57 AM
🍽️ Lunch9:57 AM
Cul's Courthouse Grille
Set in a restored 1872 country store across from the historic Charles City courthouse, Cul's Courthouse Grille is the beloved local table along the plantation route. The kitchen turns out Southern comfort cooking — crab cakes, shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, and a rotating slate of specials — in a warmly cluttered dining room hung with country antiques. It sits almost exactly midway between the plantations, making it the obvious and unhurried lunch stop. Weekends can be busy, so aim to arrive around noon.
2 options · tap to switch
☀️
Afternoon
🚗
Drive
Charles City Courthouse area → Shirley Plantation
15 min12:00 PM → 12:15 PM
Shirley Plantation
★ 4.4Founded in 1613, Shirley is the oldest plantation in Virginia and one of the oldest family-owned businesses in North America, farmed and inhabited by the Hill and Carter families for eleven generations and more than four centuries. The stately 1738 mansion is famous for its 'flying' staircase, which rises three full stories with no visible means of support — the only one of its kind in America — and for a queen's-closet interior largely unchanged since the eighteenth century. The house was the girlhood home of Anne Hill Carter, mother of Robert E. Lee, and the surviving forecourt of original brick outbuildings forms a rare intact Queen Anne plantation layout. Because the family still lives upstairs, tours have an unusually personal, lived-in quality, and the lawn runs straight down to the James.
12:15 PM📍 See location
🚗
Drive
Shirley Plantation → Sherwood Forest Plantation
20 min1:15 PM → 1:35 PM
Sherwood Forest Plantation
★ 4.3Sherwood Forest was the home of John Tyler, tenth president of the United States, who retired here in 1845 and named the estate for the outlaw of Sherwood after his own party cast him out. Successively enlarged, the frame house now stretches more than 300 feet — reputedly the longest frame dwelling in America — including a 68-foot ballroom Tyler added expressly for dancing the Virginia reel. Astonishingly, the plantation is still owned and lived in by the president's direct descendants; his grandson was alive within recent memory, a genealogical curiosity that never fails to startle visitors. The grounds, planted with more than eighty varieties of century-old trees, are open for self-guided walks year-round, with the house interior shown by advance arrangement. It is a fittingly quiet last stop before the drive back to Richmond.
1:35 PM📍 See location
🌙
Evening
🚗
Drive
Sherwood Forest Plantation → Richmond, VA
50 min5:00 PM → 5:50 PM
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