KINLOCH
Loretto vicinity, Essex County
Built 1847-48; burned 1948
Photograph: Virginia Historical Society
The home of planter-politician Richard Baylor, Kinloch was a Greek Revival mansion of remarkable refinement, dramatically
set in the flat fields of Essex County. The design shows the hand of an experienced urban architect, Robert Cary Long, Jr.,
of Baltimore. The facade featured a dwarf portico with paired Ionic columns topped by a superb iron rail and approached
by semi-circular stairs; the effect was to soften the strong Greek character of this entrance. A one-story piazza stretched
across the rear. In plan Kinloch was a square nearly sixty feet on a side. Its observation deck, more than fifty feet in
the air, offered a panorama of the Rappahannock River Valley. Inside were twenty-one rooms, eighteen with fireplaces.
The mantels were marble and the doors were finished with silver-plated hardware. Despite the size and elaborate
appointments of the house, this structure seemed more elegant than massive.
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