Garran Hill
Before it was an estate, Garran Hill was his dream of coming home.
North Carolina–born publisher, reformer, and U.S. ambassador to Great Britain.
In 1913, Page bought a thousand acres of Moore County land his father had once logged. He imagined a gentleman’s farm: orchards and gardens, peaches, pecans, and a life planted in the place he had left.
Six weeks later, Woodrow Wilson appointed him Ambassador to the Court of St James’s. War kept him in London.
“The farm. The farm. The farm.”From his letters home · London, 1917
From across the Atlantic, Page wrote home about asparagus, scuppernongs, and where the figs should grow, a garden set down in ink for a house he had not yet seen.
“Build the farm, therefore; and let me hear at every stage of that happy game.”Walter Hines Page to his son Ralph · London, 1918
He resigned the embassy, gravely ill, and sailed home in the autumn of 1918. That December, his son Frank carried him off the train at Aberdeen.
“Well, Frank, I did get here after all, didn’t I?”His last recorded words · Aberdeen Station · December 1918
He died ten days later, in Pinehurst, two miles from the finished house.
Westminster Abbey keeps his memory: “the friend of Britain in her sorest need.” Pinehurst keeps his house.
Memorial inscription · Westminster AbbeyThe century that followed is its own story: peaches by rail, Thai royalty, fourteen empty years, a three-year restoration.
The Full HistoryWhat follows is Garran Hill
Longitudinal plan. Columned portico. Headers and stretchers, course on course.
Page hired the builders of Pinehurst itself — the resort’s own carpenters and masons, under foreman J. R. McQueen. The same hands that raised the Carolina Hotel, the Holly Inn, the village green.
This house, two miles from the village, to the same standard.
A century later, the restoration met the same test: three months to source period brick for the portico alone. Three years for the whole house.
Standard held.
The door has been open since 1916.
A herringbone brick floor underfoot. Original leaded-glass sidelights, an arched fanlight above, and the solid-wood door on its first brass key plate.
The oak floors are original. So is every solid-wood door.
The Drawing Room
They made it bigger so they could dance.
Nearly Forty Feet, End to End
The Dining Room
The Kitchen
Reclaimed heart-pine underfoot. Chosen. Not incidental.
The room holds still. The pines do not.
The smallest room.The least restraint.
Gilded sink, a Tennessee marble vanity. Chinoiserie paper, flowers and birds of paradise. Not a bathroom. A decision.
The primary suite keeps the main level. The other three keep the second floor.
Where new meets 1916, you cannot find the seam.
The Primary Suite
A wing across the full depth of the house.
The Upstairs Bedrooms
Three bedrooms above, each with its own fireplace and private bath. Two of the baths have Jacuzzi tubs.
Stone walls under half the house: 707 square feet, climate-controlled. Four rooms and the long wine rack.
Every room, every system, every number →Outdoor Living
Mature longleaf pines, Grandiflora magnolias, a camellia garden. And the Wee Cottage in the rear yard, a child’s playhouse, complete and self-contained, that arrived the only sensible way: by sky crane.
Twenty-eight zones of irrigation. The gardens are not ornamental.
The grounds drink from their own well: 130 feet down, the pool besides. The house keeps to county water.
The Tennis Courts
Two hard courts screened by the pines. Built in 1985 for the neighborhood that never came. The house kept them. Commercial-grade fencing and lighting for night play. The surfaces ask for resurfacing. A season’s work, not a rescue.
The geometry is true. The setting was never in question.
The Grounds
The walk does not end at the door. Lawn, walled pool, gardens, courts — 4.15 acres, and every window faces them.
200 Hollycrest is the last piece of the original Garran Hill still standing on its own ground.
A private gated island in the Pinehurst ETJ — a Pinehurst address, a county tax bill.The golf capital of the world, a golf cart ride from the gates.
Offered at $4,250,000
Pines Sotheby’s International Realty, proud member of the Sotheby’s International Realty® luxury real estate network. Sotheby’s International Realty® is a registered trademark licensed to Sotheby’s International Realty Affiliates LLC. Each office is independently owned and operated. Equal Housing Opportunity.