For more information and pictures go to www.historiclothian.com

Built circa 1801 this wonderful example of Federal and Georgian architectural styles stands as on of the most beautiful and historical significant properties in Anne Arundel County. This is only the second time this historic property has been on the market in its 200 year history. The home sits on 33 bucolic acres with pasture and forest. The house and grounds make this a lovely residence for formal entertaining or a grand retreat. The home has five large bedrooms and over 6000 sq ft of living and entertaining spaces. This historic home has nine working fireplaces, four chimneys, as well as a wood paneled library and a wood burning fire place in the family room. The formal dining room, with fireplace and two huge windows overlooking the grounds, adjoins the gourmet kitchen and is perfect for entertaining. Original pine hardwood floors and hand crafted moldings are a testimate to the hard work in preserving the properties past. These preservation efforts are significant feature of the house while updating it to today’s modern life style. The house is an ideal entertaining space with modern kitchen and formal dining areas, fireplaces, beautiful bathrooms, and twelve foot ceilings.

The grounds area perfect for the equestrian. The grounds include a large fenced paddock and eight stall stable complete with wash area and tack and feed rooms. 

The property is located within Anne Arundel County in Lothian Maryland. Surrounded by farms and horse country this property offers the feeling of being a world apart from the hectic life, but with a short distance to all the world class area has to offer. Lothian is only minutes to Historic Annapolis the capital of Maryland. Annapolis is also considered the sailing capital of America and has numerous harbors and boating opportunities. Annapolis has world class dining and shopping opportunities as well as public and private schools to choose from. The city of Annapolis is rich in history and culture. Lothian is also within a short commute to our nation’s capital, Washington D.C., and everything this metropolitan city has to offer.

History of Lothian

Lothian was originally built in 1804 by Phillip Thomas, who was one of the early Maryland Quakers. He attended St. Johns College in Annapolis and was the author of Tales of an American Landlord. Following a city house plan from a popular British mail order blue print, the house consisted of spacious hall with a staircase and two large rooms up and two large rooms down. Around 1850 the house was expanded when their daughter Mary, married Dr. James Cheston. Mary passed away, but her husband married he sister Cornelia, and the property stayed in the family. The property passed from generation to generation of the Thomas’s, Halls, and Chaney’s (a distant relation of Robert E. Lee) until the current owners purchased the home in 2003.

 During the expansion of the home in 1850, the four square rooms were duplicated on the other side of the hall. The first potion that was constructed was federal style, while after the expansion it became full Georgian style. This combination of styles makes Lothian a unique and significant historic treasure.

 The following is a description of Lothian circa 1929 from “Homes of the Cavaliers“first published in 1930 by Katherine Scarborough.

 A house which doubled itself is Lothian, typical in every way of the homes erected by the Englishmen who settled in the West river section of Anne Arundel County. Rectangular in form, serene in aspect, it stands in a grove of giant locusts and maples a short distance from the road leading from Annapolis to Washington, but it is completely invisible to passerby when the leaves are on the trees. Originally Lothian was but half its present size, but even then it was a large house and in its complete form its outlines suggest an ease of life and a not-too-distant concern with the affairs of the world at large which was thoroughly characteristic of the true West river planter.

Built when Thomas Jefferson was struggling with the problems of an infant republic and seeking to evolve from “ the mud flats along the Potomac”, a city worthy to be called the capital, Lothian reveals non of the concern which agitated the leaders of the young country, but is instead, the expression of the builder whose interests were bound up with the well being of a small circle of country gentlemen who were his neighbors, who preferred to sit at the head of a long table gleaming with hall-marked silver rather than to grow choleric over politics, and deferred the naming of his home until he discovered in the “Midlothian” of sir Walter Scott limpid syllables which seemed to fit.

 Lothian was built in 1804 by Philip Thomas and has descended through the feminine line to his great granddaughter, Miss Sally Hall, who occupies the house and superintends the management of the farms which surround it. The approach from State road leads through rolling, cultivated fields and over a wide lawn where butter cups scatter like gold dust through the grass in June. Tucked into a sheltered corner where the servants’ wing adjoins the main portion of the house is a mimosa tree, rare in the climate, which blooms in a tentative way. The doorway at Lothian supplies the keynote to the house. Designed on classic lines, it presents against the deep red brick of the walls the contrast of fluted pilasters and a triangular pediment, ornamented with dentils. The enfragement is constructed of wood; hand carved and painted but, through the paint is in excellent condition some curious coruscation gives it, seen from a short distance, the look of stone.

At the roofline a plain white, wooden cornice completes the effect of simplicity. Ivy is only just beginning to encroach on the front façade, but one end of the walls is almost completely covered by it. Even the outline of the chimneys, which rise two by two at each end of the house, is scarcely discernable under its thick festoons. A double door, paneled and solid, opens into the central hall which is about fifteen feet wide and leads to a corresponding door at the opposite side of the house, where a short flight of steps descend to a terraced garden.

 The hall is divided midway by an arch supported on pilasters carved with tambour fluting. From the center of the arch hangs a hurricane lamp of etched glass, a century old. Bach of the arch the stairway is placed against the right wall and is the most pronounced architectural feature of the interior, with broad steps rising with the ease of the day when no one ever was in a hurry. An exceedingly light handrail surmounts a balustrade a square spindles which curl about themselves like the poet’s chambered nautilus, instead of terminating in the usual newel post. A single landing divides the flight to the second floor and another landing divides the flight which continues the ascent to the attic. A conventional scroll carving appears on the end of each step and the posts which mark the turn of the stair have carved finials. A half-handrail set into the wall runs parallel with the balustrade.

Into the hallway of Lothian comes a subdued half-light let in through a semi-circular transom which permitted little enough illumination in its palmiest time but which was further throttled many years ago by a strong-willed ancient-of-days who was given to sitting in the hall with her head wrapped in a thick green veil, her hands encased in gloves and complaining bitterly of the glare. To placate the lady the transom was painted green and, through some of the paint has come off since then enough remains to consign the hall to an apparently permanent twilight.

 The drawingroom, to the left of the hall, is high ceilinged and square, with a low wainscoting. Its mantel shows a rope carving and tambour fluting and from the walls the features of dark-eyed med in velvet and lace and women in satin gowns look down from dull gilt frames. Back of the drawingroom is the dining room with two large windows giving a view of the garden and a Hepplewhite sideboard set with a service of Queen Anne silver. In addition to the terraced garden where perennials bloom, a part of the vegetable garden at one side of the house also is give over to flowers. Here, just inside the gate, the white, star like flowers of a sweet jasmine bloom as they did when another mistress of Lothian put on her silken sunbonnet, (still preserved in the house) and her lace mites and went out to do her weeding.