A Visit to Cupola House, Edenton

The march through Edenton continued after the courthouse, the next port of call being the truly beautiful Cupola House. Possibly my favorite site of the day, the Cupola House has a decidedly Jacobean look, though it was built in the 1750s. 

The house was built for a rather unscrupulous gentleman named Francis Corbin, who eventually ran afoul of the locals (I suppose that tends to happen when you embezzle from the Lord Proprietor and sell townsfolk overlapping parcels of land) and was forced out of Edenton. So much the worse for him, as it meant leaving this charming dwelling.

According to our guide, in the early part of the 20th century the last of the family that had inhabited the house for generations was at the point of needing to raise funds. She sadly sold off part of the home's paneling to a fellow from a museum somewhere in Brooklyn, though happily some of the Edentonians helped keep the paneling from the second floor intact in the home. It must be said that the first floor's reproduction paneling is pretty well done, and definitely helps the visitor imagine the Colonial paneling in all its glory.

The central hall is the most Jacobean part of the house, to my mind. The dark, rich wood paneling and back staircase feel almost gloomy, perhaps the remnants of Francis Corbin's dirty deeds and the fallout therefrom. 

Upstairs one can view three delightful bedrooms, and we were treated to another story of the origins of a rather commonplace turn of phrase: saving face. It all makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Back in the Colonial era when the makeup was much more bothersome than it is today (and contained arsenic, which was probably a bad idea and definitely not safe), makeup worn by ladies of the day tended to melt if faces were too close to the warmth of a fire. A firescreen, therefore, helped a lady save face by keeping her makeup from running as she sat by the fire. 

Cupola House was probably my favorite of the buildings on the Edenton tour, though if some of the other homes in town had been open to the public it might well have had some fierce competition. Additional photos of the home below. 

   


[photos copyright Megan Petty]