Although not technically abandoned when we visited, Historic Belmead Monastery is certainly magical. Unfortunately, as of February 2017, Belmead is abandoned, despite being on the national register of historical places. This place is many things and is kind of hard to explain. Built in the mid 1800s, the grounds include the Belmead mansion overlooking the James River, an equestrian school, the abandoned St Francis De Sales school (more on that later), several 1940s houses, miles of trails, and formerly the St. Emma Industrial and Agricultural School for African American males. Several nuns had lived at Belmead for many years and continued to run the FrancisEmma Inc, a non-profit foundation, in an effort to preserve the history of the place and raise money to restore the partially collapsed St. Francis school. I first found out about Belmead from my dad, who had stopped by on his bike several times and received a tour from the nuns. Also, one of my best childhood friend’s mom is very close to the nuns and was actually the one who told us where the mansion was. Unfortunately, due to Drexel University (who’s founder helped found the schools at Belmead) putting the property on the market late last year, the giant mansion now sits abandoned, along with the school and other buildings on the site. The future of Belmead, the property, the nuns, and the school are now uncertain. The place really is quite magical, and we visited right at dusk. There is some kind of feeling that I got when we visited. I really can’t explain it, but the place seemed like something out of a storybook. Unfortunately the nuns were not there on the day that we visited, so we weren’t able to go inside the mansion, and I guess now we may never get to. They were very nice though and appreciated our interest. The history of Belmead is almost too long and interesting to fit here, but you can read about it here:
Now just wait until you see what we saw when we went back a month later and were able to find the St. Francis De Sales School, which was one of the school which were run by Belmead. I’ll post that soon.
