John Lennon Waterfront Home, Mobjack Bay Chesapeake Bay, Va: Poplar Grove, Tide Mill, Auburn 'Haunts
Last edited Thu Dec 10, 2020, 02:32 PM - Edit history (4)
'Poplar Grove; Imagine There’s No Tide Mill,' Posted on 21 October, *2013 by Ben Swenson.
- Poplar Grove 18th c. home, Mathews County, Va.
No telling what John Lennon thought when he hopped out of his Rolls Royce at Poplar Grove and saw the tide mill off in the distance. Perhaps the structure’s rustic charm inspired some nascent song lyrics or signaled the peace of mind Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono would invariably find at their country home. Not that the venerable old mill needed Lennon’s lyrical genius or his ownership to validate its worth, mind you. Even then, in 1980, months before Lennon met his sad fate, the mill was already extraordinary, the last of a kind, a portrait of a simpler time.
Now, more than three decades on, the tide mill at Poplar Grove still stands–aging, weathered, in need of a little TLC, but a surviving and extremely rare example of the energy our ancestors saw in the deep water.
- The Tide Mill built on a dam at Poplar Grove.
- The sluice at the Tide Mill, Poplar Grove home in background.
Poplar Grove is a handsome estate in rural Mathews County, Virginia, a three-hour drive south of Washington D.C. A stately, eighteenth-century porticoed mansion overlooks ancient trees, a sweeping lawn and the East River beyond. Sally Tompkins, the only woman to be commissioned a Confederate officer, was born here.
There was a grist mill at Poplar Grove in colonial times, grinding into usable meal the grain grown in the fertile fields nearby. George Washington’s troops at Yorktown ate food produced at the mill.
Unlike windmills that harnessed energy from bay breezes or more westerly watermills that captured the power of falling streams, Poplar Grove’s mill used tidewater to turn its gears. Slaves built a dam across a finger of water that reached eastward off the wide river in front of the plantation. That created a lagoon, or millpond, where a tidal creek had once been. Two sets of gates allowed the miller to manipulate the water level in the millpond.
The gates would be shut until high tide in the river, then opened, letting the water rush through the mill’s narrow opening, or sluice, turning the wheel that ultimately ground grain. There’s an added feature of tide mills, too: they are reversible. By means of shutting the gates and holding the high tide in the millpond, the miller could also use an outgoing tide, opening the gates when the level in the river was lower than that behind the dam. The ancient technology is simple, ingenious.
..No telling what plans, if any, Lennon and Ono had for the tide mill. They purchased Poplar Grove, as well as the nearby Auburn estate, in early 1980 through a real estate investment firm Lennon created called Pentacles Realty. The couple had a caretaker at Poplar Grove, a Norwegian named Oggie, and would visit from time-to-time to get away from the hustle of the big city.
Lennon owned Poplar Grove for less than a year before a deranged fan shot him outside of his New York City apartment. Ono donated the plantation to charity, a nearby boys’ home for abused children. Bereaved fans flocked to Poplar Grove to capture some fleeting memory of their beloved folk hero...
Read More, http://www.abandonedcountry.com/2013/10/21/poplar-grove-imagine-theres-no-tide-mill/
Mobjack Bay, Va., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobjack_Bay
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- 'Haunted Houses In Mathews, Virginia,' The Inn At Tabb's Creek, 2015.
“Auburn Plantation” – Located on the North River in Mathews County, this is probably the most famous of the Mathews Haunted Houses. Built in 1824 by Philip Tabb, (yes there were and are still a lot of “Tabbs” around here), it became the home of his son Dr. Henry Wyeth Tabb until 1863. Good Ol’ Dr. Tabb ended up having 3 wives, (he outlived the first two), and several children.
The house had seen it’s fair share of good times and tragedies, but the most famous tragedy happened when one of his daughters, Mary Eliza, suffered a terrible fall down the grand staircase in the middle of the foyer of the house. It was supposedly on her wedding day, and Dr. Tabb reported hearing the most terrible noise only to find his daughter at the bottom of the stairs. She died later that evening, and it has become a tradition that her white leather wedding slippers would always remain with the house and have been handed down from each subsequent owner to the next.
In the 1970’s, the house was purchased by John Lennon and Yoko Ono who were seeking a quiet retreat in a remote location where they could escape their hectic life in NYC, (yep, I can bet that @ 90% of the residents of Mathews at the time would not have recognized John Lennon if he went up and punched them in the face), and apparently Yoko was very superstitious. She refused to have those wedding slippers in the house, (I’m with her…that’s just creepy), had the house exorcised, and then had the basement filled with sand as she heard that would keep the ghosts away.
Our first year open as a B&B, we had guests that were related to the owners who purchased Auburn after John Lennon’s death, and they told us they spent quite a bit of money to empty the basement of all that sand. And then they started hearing and seeing a few ghosts.
Apparently, the most “seen” ghost is a confederate soldier, and not sure what his story is, but my brother David who works with us here at The Inn at Tabbs Creek can vouch for the other most common paranormal activity which is audible. Back in the mid 90’s, Dave had his own small catering business here in Mathews, and was hired by the owners to do a cocktail and appetizer event at Auburn on New Years Eve. After the festivities, all the guests left for the next leg of the party at another old house, and Dave had been left alone to clean up the mess...
More, https://innattabbscreek.com/haunted-houses-in-mathews/
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