Wakefield Barn, the gothic-roofed large barn that was once the centerpiece of a model farm near Wake Forest, is for sale along with six acres of horse pasture and an open air, steel-frame riding ring, 11 acres in all.
The complex on Old Falls of Neuse Road is an equestrian center for hunters and jumpers owned by Steve and Mary Schilling. The asking price is $1.8 million, but its status as a Local Historic Landmark reduces the property tax by half.
The history of the barn and the large farm are part of the history of the area. The Depression that began in the late 1920s and continued through the 1930s was brutal for small farmers like those who had been farming for years in the area. Crop prices fell; the price for the cotton many local farmers raised fell to rock bottom; and the boll weevil found its way into North Carolina.
John Sprunt Hill and other wealthy men found it to be an ideal time to buy up those farms that were in foreclosure or great distress. Think of Emmitt Marshall and his 1,100 acres, W.W. Holding and his 1,000 acres. But Hill surpassed them all, buying at first 1,750 acres that grew later to 2,200 acres sprawling from the Neuse River on the south, U.S. 1 on the east and west of Falls of the Neuse Road.
Hill also purchased several small local banks and formed the Bank of Durham which located a branch in Wake Forest, at first in rented quarters, later in the Colonial-style brick building on South White Street. The Bank of Durham would become Central Carolina Bank and is now SunTrust.
Hill had the money for these enterprises because he, after graduating from the University of North Carolina and Columbia University School of Law, worked as a lawyer in New York City where he met and married Annie Louise Watt of Durham, the only daughter of George Washington Watts, who owned the American Tobacco Company. After Watts became ill, the couple returned to Durham in 1903 so Hill could take over management of the company.
Hill’s hobby was farming, in particular raising Guernsey dairy cows, orange/red and white in color, which produce milk known for its rich flavor. He already had three dairy farms in Durham County in 1931 when he began buying the small farms to create what was called at first Forest Hill Farm. Farm operations began in 1932; the barn was constructed in 1934.
S.O. Rich was the farm manager, living in the 1805 plantation house (since razed), and he designed and built the barn and the other outbuildings, including the calf barn and the bull barn, with the help of master carpenter Benjamin Thomas Hicks. The two men would meet each morning, S.O. drawing out the next step in the dairy barn construction on a piece of wood for Hicks to follow. By that time, Hicks had built most of the workers houses in the mill village connected to the Royall Cotton Mill and several houses on and near North Main Street in Wake Forest. He had also been called in to help with the construction of the dome on Wake Forest Baptist Church.
Rich kept meticulous records for Hill of the work done and all other matters, including the milk sold and the wages paid to the laborers. In one book of the many handed down to a local grandson, Rich noted that the following men drew wages ranging from $5.40 to $9.50 for the week ending Saturday, Feb. 13, 1938: A. Haley, D. Haley, M. Haley, Pugh Tharrington, Bruce Lowery, Lehman Allen, George Browning, Charlie Hicks, Raymon (sic) Walker, Robert Walker, Dennis Dun, Hoy Harris, Spencer Hicks and Russel (sic) Hicks. That week they had “Finished setting shrubs in yard, working on grape trellis, mixing fertilizer and digging dirt out of manure pit sheds and laying drain pipe. Ploughing for corn and finished seeding oats on 45 acre long fenced field on Feb. 10th. Finished resalting Mr. Hills meat Feb. 12th.”
Other names that were often on the payroll and are probably still familiar to some locally are Exum Gill, E.H. Forbes who was paid $5 for testing the milk, Pugh Carpenter, Zeph Carpenter, Ulas Winston, Ezra Bailey, Collie Bailey and Dennis Dunn.
The ploughing was done by the two Percheron mares purchased in 1934 who foaled at regular intervals, adding to the farm’s income. The farm produced corn, cotton, oats, barley, wheat and hay. “Almost all feed used is grown and ground and mixed on the farm as is the fertilizer,” a contemporary publication said. “This work supplies employment during rainy days and the feed is never held longer than a week after grinding.”
The Guernsey herd of 35 registered cows was small for the size of the operation, but the farm frequently led the state in butter fat production. The milk was sold to Pine State in Raleigh, the milk processing plant begun in 1919 which made dairy farming possible locally.
About 1939 or 1940, the farm name was changed to Wakefield, obviously borrowing from the Sutherland-Harris plantation and home farther north. Hill sold the farm to his son George Watts Hill in 1947, who sold it to A.P. Brown in 1951. A year later Gregory Poole of Raleigh bought the farm, discontinued the dairy operation and maintained a 500-head herd of Hertford beef cattle. In the 1980s the North Hill Corporation, with an eye to developing all that acreage, bought the farm.
At some point the barn acreage was separated from the land which became the Wakefield subdivision. After passing through several owners, the barns and eleven acres of land were purchased by Steve and Mary Schilling. Mary’s efforts resulted in the designation of the Wakefield Dairy Complex as a Wake County Historic Landmark and in a listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
