Court Manor

Court Manor (built as Mooreland Hall) is an early Greek Revival manor house and estate in Rockingham County, Virginia, located 4 miles (6.4 km) south of the town of New Market. With its stately manor house and prime location in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, Court Manor has long been regarded as "one of the finest estates in the Valley of Virginia." The estate is situated on U.S. Route 11, which follows the route of the historic Great Wagon Road, a colonial thoroughfare connecting Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Savannah, Georgia. The estate's landholdings include some 2,000 acres (810 hectares) of land, extending from the base of the Massanutten Mountain Ridge to about one-half mile (0.80 km) west of U.S. Route 11. The manor house (circa 1800), with its impressive Greek Revival portico, can be easily seen from the tree-lined stretch of U.S. Route 11 that passes through the heart of the estate.

Early Estate History

Colonial Period

Sometime prior to the final surveying of the Fairfax Line in 1746, Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, granted a tract of land on the Great Wagon Road near Smith Creek to a Samuel Newman, who in turn sold the land in 1754 to Thomas Moore, Sr., (1727–1797). The first permanent dwelling to be built on the estate was the house of Thomas Moore, Sr., which was located on a knoll overlooking Smith Creek. Seeking to expand the size of his landholdings, Moore petitioned the Crown for a land grant of some 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares), which was granted by King George III eleven years later in 1765. For the next century and a half, the estate was to remain in the hands of Moore family.