RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, IS ALMOST AN English town. A settlement older than the United States itself, it is perhaps the perfectly preserved symbol of the deep roots and common ties of its country with the greater Anglosphere; to use the former Senator and Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III’s phrase, a reminder of the “Anglo-American heritage”.
Walking through Sulgrave Road — after you drive through a couple of cross-sections named Dover, Canterbury, Cambridge and Exeter roads — one can find a Tudor-era manor house with wooden beams transported and shipped from Lancashire. A British and an American flag flutter side by side at the entrance.
Next door is a sixteenth-century priory house that is currently a museum, a chapter of the Virginia historical society and a wedding venue, once again shipped brick by brick from Warwick; its walls and arcades adorned by wisterias and limoniums. An ornate moss-covered stone birdbath is on the roadside, not unlike one that can be seen in Stamford Hall or Newstead Abbey.
Virginia’s history is layered with complexity. It was the first colony to ratify the Articles of Confederation. Richmond hosts the historic St John’s Church, where Patrick Henry cried “give me liberty or give me death”. It is where the capital was temporarily relocated in 1780 and where one of the last major British raids took place in 1781,
