87 Silverbrook Rd, Sandisfield, MA, 01255

About This Home

Beautifully restored historic Colonial on a very lightly traveled, town-maintained road with stone walls, fruit trees, open meadow, wooded acreage, a barn and garage. Three quarters of a mile of its own road frontage, bordering protected land. Home to author Simon Winchester for twenty-five years. .. c.1760 and 1840. 4 bedrooms, 3 baths. Library, keeping room with original crane fireplace, Aga kitchen, vaulted living room, screened-in porch. A c.1812 granary rebuilt as a writing studio with loft and full bath. .. Orchard, meadow, vernal stream, quiet forest. 60 acres. A genuine Berkshire country place with a sky that still delivers. Located in Sandisfield, in the Southern Berkshires. Two and a half hours to the city. Two centuries of history on 60 acres. Read the whole story. 'Click' BARNHILL FARM circa 1760 and 1840 | 4 bedrooms, 3 baths | approximately 55 acres | 3/4 mile road frontage Offers in excess of $2,250,000 considered (it's a British thing) . On a January morning, the Aga has been burning through the night. The kitchen is warm before you get there. The sun will rise directly into it and track around the entire wing through the day. The studio is a c.1812 granary - close enough to walk to with your coffee. Far enough that once you are inside, nothing domestic follows you in. Eight books were written here. In May, sitting on the stoop, the apple trees are in blossom and the air is extraordinary. There are also summer evenings at the fire pit when the peepers start up from the frog pond at dusk. October cider pressing parties in the orchard. Winter nights on the screened porch with the telescope trained on Saturn, the sky so dark and so clear that Winchester said the stars look like diamonds on velvet. He has stayed here for twenty-five years. There is also this: Edmund Hamilton Sears, whose family farmed just down the road, carried the memory of this sky with him for the rest of his life. His brother Joshua bought this very farm five years after Sears wrote 'It Came Upon a Midnight Clear'. The literary thread here runs deep. But it is not the reason to buy this property. The reason is the life it makes possible. . The Property and the Setting Barnhill Farm sits on approximately 60 acres running ¾ of a mile along Silverbrook Road, a very lightly traveled, town-maintained road in Sandisfield. Stone walls border the drive. The sign at the road reads Barnhill Farm. Sandisfield sits two and a half hours from New York and Boston, and is the antithesis to both. The remove is real, and it is the point. . Two Birthdays The original structure on this land was built around 1760 by James Ayrault, whose family had acquired this lot in Sandisfield's first land division. In 1840 a new addition was built in the Greek Revival style, transforming the original 1760 structure into the summer kitchen ell. The entire property was restored with care and precision in 1985 by old-house specialist Peter Strattner of New Marlborough, who set aside every salvageable original element, recreated missing plaster and molding by hand, and refitted the foundation with quarried stone. Not a house made to look old. An old house brought back to itself. Winchester purchased Barnhill Farm in 2001, continuing the project of lovingly restoring and expanding the historic home. In 2006 he renovated the screened-in porch and transformed by opening the interior, vaulting the ceiling to expose the timber beams, rebuilding the original kitchen with hand-crafted cabinetry and placing his dream Aga against the chimney. For practicality, he added a mudroom, and at the far end of the living space, built a dual-sided wood-burning fireplace with a new screened-in porch on its other face. He also built out the library with shelves from floor to ceiling. . Coming In Three doors face the driveway. The formal front door of the 1840 house opens into a proper entry hall. To the right, the Morning Room: a fireplace, Farrow & Ball Pink Ground on the walls, formal enough for dinner and warm enough to linger in over a second cup of coffee. Further along, the library: dark aubergine walls, wood stove, hundreds of books. This is where the door closes and the rest of the house stops. At the end of the hall, a small room with a single bed and a huge chalkboard wall. Across the hall is the keeping room, the informal heart of the 1760 house. A large fireplace with its original crane anchors the space, now fitted with a wood stove. In winter, breakfast happens here bathed in early light, the wide plank floors warm underfoot, the room doing what it has always done. In the afternoon the light bends into the angles of the room in a way that makes it difficult to leave. This is also where people end up after dinner. Off to the north: a full bath with laundry, a pantry, and the larger of the two ground floor bedrooms, its door set into the corner of the west wall. . Upstairs Stairs in the entry hall take you to a primary bedroom, a guest room, and a full bath, with views over the orchard, quiet in the way that an upstairs room in an old house on a country road knows how to be quiet. Above the 1760 portion, a finished attic serves as dressing room and closet. Higher still, a fully finished third floor attic currently used as a music room and gym, easily suited to additional sleeping. .. The 1760 Wing A small covered porch connects the 1840 house to the 1760 wing on the keeping room side. The mudroom, with underfloor heating, brings you in from the driveway. Beyond the mudroom, the original galley kitchen: the Aga set against the chimney repaired and expanded in 1985, custom cabinetry built to the character of the house rather than imposed upon it, a peninsula of warm wood reaching into the open space beyond and drawing you into the vaulted living room. Winchester says the house is superbly designed for light. In winter the sun proves him right: it rises into this kitchen and tracks the full length of the room through the day. Timber beams span the vaulted ceiling above wide plank floors. At the far end, the dual-sided fireplace stands between the room and the screened-in porch. Both sides worth being on. Both often are. . The Screened-In Porch This room is used in every season, particularly so in the summer. In winter, glazed panels close off the weather and the sun warms it like a greenhouse. The south-facing fireplace masonry holds the heat of the sun long after it has set. Breakfast out here, and afternoon tea, and wine in the evening when the fireplace is lit. Come late spring, some of the panels give way to screens and the room opens to the meadow and the sky. A long table for dinner. The telescope positioned to track the planets on their path across the southern sky. No meaningful light pollution reaches Barnhill Farm. The nearest glow on the horizon is Winsted, Connecticut, miles away. Some nights it is not visible at all. . The Studio The granary stands at the edge of the orchard, reached along a path through the perennial gardens. The apple trees spread west from it into the open meadow. Present but apart. Close enough to walk to in the morning with your coffee. Far enough that the domestic world does not follow you in. Winchester found it near Cambridge, NY: a c.1812 structure in serious disrepair. He had it carefully dismantled, restored in Vermont, and re-erected here in 2006. What stands today is a freestanding structure with intricate timber framing that is fully visible, books lining every wall from floor to the peak of the roof, a working library on the main level, and a sleeping loft above. A full bath is fitted at one end. In May, sitting on the studio stoop, the orchard is in blossom and the air is extraordinary. In October the apples come down and the pressing parties begin. Winchester is taking the books and art with him. Everything else remains. . The Art Studio, the Barn, and the Outbuildings The main barn is a weathered timber-frame structure whose interior Setsuko Winchester, a former journalist turned artist and historian, fitted with a chandelier from their Chelsea Manhattan apartment and a mezzanine level with its own staircase, the design borrowed from a barn on the road to Granville that she admired. An art studio for her and a wood-shop for him occupy the lower level. . The property's sustainability has been addressed quietly and completely: all windows in the main house were replaced with insulated units designed to match the character of the old house, and solar panels on the barn's south-facing roof cover all electrical costs without disturbing the 19th-century feel of the place. The red equipment barn nearby provides an EV charging outlet. .. The Land The property moves from one outdoor space to the next, and no two are alike. Close to the house, a stone patio with a fire pit and table for evenings. Beyond it, Goosey's Garden: a former chicken run now one of the most productive patches on the property with raised beds. A frog pond and fire pit to the east of the big barn, which is where the evening often migrates: the peepers start at dusk, the birds work the water, and it is difficult to leave before dark. The orchard produces cider apples and an abundance of peaches. The crab-apple trees along the front of the house draw a wide variety of birds. Wild blueberries run along the treeline where the old apple trees give way to forest. The plantings have never seen a pesticide or been artificially fertilized, relying instead on the compost produced on the property and finding the right spot for each varietal. In the pine grove beyond the meadow, the light changes completely. Pine needles carpet the ground. Adirondack chairs and a hammock have lived in here for years. Even in July it is cool and unhurried, the kind of place where time moves differently. A vernal stream meanders through the woodland beyond, heard before it is seen. The property borders protected land. Fifty feet into the woods and the house is completely gone. The canopy closes. It is quiet in a way that is easier to feel than to explain. . What This Is Simon Winchester chose this place and stayed 25 years. Setsuko Winchester arrived to continue the updating and modernizing of the property while carefully maintaining its early American character. She shaped the land, the barn, the gardens, and the art studio into what they are today. What they built together is a genuine country place. Not a weekend house. Not a showcase. Simply a beautiful farmhouse. A place where work happened, where the land was tended, where the peepers mark the evening and the Aga marks the morning and the sky at night is the sky as it was always meant to be seen. . It is ready for whoever understands what they are looking at. Come and see what that feels like.