Mount Athos

Two miles north stand massive sandstone walls and four chimneys, the ruins of Mount Athos, overlooking a bend of the James River. The house was built about 1800 for William J. Lewis (1766-1828) on land that had been patented in 1742 by John Bolling and called Buffalo Lick Plantation. Lewis, who bought the land from Bolling's heirs in 1796, had commanded riflemen at Yorktown in 1781. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates (1810-1811; 1814-1817) and the U.S. Congress (1817-1819). Mount Athos stood one story high on a raised basement, with a portico on the north front and two octagonal projections on the south. It burned in 1876.