It’s the type of place where one would expect to hear well-bred horse hooves leisurely clattering down the gravel courtyard as equestrians take their daily ride. A horse would never want for forage around the estate, where cordgrass chokes the brackish marshes that cut through the jagged-shaped peninsula bound by shifting bluffs that roughly fall onto calm beaches strewn with smooth stones. From the estate’s private beach, Fort Hill’s fortress-like design is formidable yet inviting, at least to me.
My visit last December was perfectly timed, with the Tudor revival home cast in the soft winter light, and not a mosquito in sight. Currently on the market for $19 million, the Gold Coast of Long Island is still gilded, and had the distinction of being so when the Hamptons were still shrubby potato farms.
Pulling into the gravel driveway, one is immediately struck by the scale of the Old World-style property, with its spacious courtyard and defensive position on a steep ridge that sharply drops to Cold Spring Harbor. It looks like an English estate, but the view from the kitchen reminded me of a Mediterranean villa, with Cold Spring Harbor, bluer than any body of water I had seen since gazing from the bluffs of Capri.
The jagged coves and bays of the north shore proved valuable for the British during the American Revolution. During the military occupation from 1776-83, Lloyd Neck became an important woodcutting depot. Schooners would easily dock in the cove under the awesome guns emplaced along Fort Franklin’s bastion. The fort was christened Fort Franklin in 1778 in honor of Benjamin Franklin’s loyalist son, who endured two years of brutal captivity in Connecticut. When he arrived in New York after a prisoner exchange, his wife had died and vengeance was his new covenant. Quickly appointed president of the Board of Associated Loyalists, he would plan, but never actually execute, raids on patriot nests across the Long Island Sound.
Due to the length of Long Island- the “great whale”- it was impossible for the British to garrison every town. Key towns were permanently occupied, while others would host British, Hessian, and loyalist troops on and off. Huntington was permanently garrisoned, making the glacial moraines on Lloyd Neck, surrounded by rich virgin timber, an obvious place to fortify.
Loyalist refugees from Georgia to New England toiled on Lloyd Neck, feeding the insatiable need for firewood in New York. Between 500-800 troops, mostly loyalists, typically garrisoned Fort Franklin. The fort became an important stronghold between the British garrisons in New York and Newport, dispatching troops after an overland march from New York when the caprices of Hell Gate proved too turbulent.
By May 1781, Washington showed humility in dropping his obsessive plans to lay siege to New York with the French army, which had landed in Newport a year after the British abandoned it. In a snug room at the Webb House in Wethersfield, Connecticut, Washington locked horns with Rochambeau until the Frenchman finally convinced him of the viability of bypassing New York to march to Yorktown, Virginia. There, a large force under Lord Cornwallis lay particularly vulnerable without naval support while the French kept the British navy preoccupied with invasions of their Caribbean islands.
But the guns around New York grew loud as the Franco-American army prepared to bypass New York on their long march. Fed with false intelligence, Sir Henry Clinton continued to believe, and fear, that New York would be invaded any day. The French stoked these fears with diversionary assaults, including a massive assault on Fort Franklin.
On July 12, 1781, some 450 Frenchmen waded ashore the marshes on Lloyd Neck’s eastern end. The stagnant pools of the neck made the mosquitoes almost as formidable as enemy fire, perhaps more so when one considers how many had served in the Caribbean and watched hundreds die of malaria. Prodding through the swamps and pine barrens that now encompass Caumsett State Park, they approached the fort’s eastern flank when all hell…was prevented from breaking loose.
The fort’s commander, Massachusetts loyalist Joshua Upham ordered a massive grapeshot volley that, in his words, “threw them into confusion, and occasioned a very sudden, and I humbly conceive, very disgraceful retreat to their ships”.
It was a forgotten skirmish, and the British would take no chances. Even after the victory at Yorktown, fortifications were strengthened in the area. Massachusetts-born loyalist Benjamin Thompson (later made Count Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire) commanded the King’s American Dragoons around the fort, while building his reputation as an enlightenment man who contributed to the improvement of gunpowder. His portrait proudly hangs in Fort Hill.
The prominence surrounding the fort was turned into an estate in 1879, and the Gilded Age mansion was later expanded for a dye magnate. When we visited, the revolutionary history of the site was tangible, but distant. Cannons were aptly installed on the green overlooking Cold Spring Harbor.
The modern kitchen was a cogent reminder that Fort Hill is a home, not a house museum. The grand rooms boast a palatial limestone fireplace, wood carvings, a spacious library, and spiral stairs that took us to the suite of bedrooms and a modern exercise room upstairs. The cold wind whirled off the sound, kept at bay by the small fortune needed to heat such a grand estate. It whipped us as we climbed up to the veranda, and hit us with the realization that we were in one of the northeast’s most stunning private homes. After spotting the neighboring finger-like peninsulas, the distant sculpture of White Plains, and the formal English gardens of the estate, we retracted our steps to take in one of the plant rooms off the lower veranda.
The gardens were on par with some quaint public parks. The diversity of trees was deeply admired, as were the brilliant, long shadows they cast as we walked across one of the spacious greens. Our patient and gracious host, Tom, led us through the chambers of a modern home as our minds wandered through the annals of time.
As we drove through the neck towards the city, the sound of musketry, and the horns of Gilded Age yachts piercing through the coves sounded all the more vivid.
Christopher T. Burton is a contributor to the Seasun. He is the co-creator of the Daily Sublime™, an upcoming art and media platform. He is based in New York.
