The Inn at Fordhook Farm, set on 60 acres a mile and a half from the center of Doylestown, is the Burpee family estate. There’s a bank barn and a carriage house, surrounded by the fields and meadows where W. Atlee Burpee first tested seeds for his company before the turn of the century. The oldest part of the fieldstone-and-plaster house with a mansard roof dates from 1740. Through the years, additions were carefully made to blend architecturally with the original structure. Burpee’s grandchild, Jonathan Burpee, grew up here. Thinking that a bed-and-breakfast would be a good way to preserve the family home, Jonathan and his wife, Carole, opened it to guests in 1985.
The house is furnished with English and American family antiques and photographs, grandfather clocks, and other Americana. In the dining room, the man-tel is inlaid with Mercer tiles, and the long mahogany table is set with heir-loom china each morning for breakfast. French doors open to a large terrace shaded by a 200-year-old linden tree, with a view of the broad, sweeping lawn. In the bedrooms, you will find floral prints, quilts, 19th-century four-poster beds, window seats, and family photographs and portraits.
The carriage house is a spacious two-bedroom suite not quite as carefully decorated as the main house, but ideal for a family or for two couples. The chestnut-paneled Great Room there, once a study, has a vaulted ceiling and Palladian win-dows, and children’s books, photographs, and other Burpee memorabilia every-where.
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