The Rev. Edmund Sears grew up on a farm down the road in Sandisfield. He carried its sky with him. That sky gave us ''It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.'' Simon Winchester arrived 150 years later, trained his telescope on Saturn, and declared the stars were like ''diamonds on velvet.'' Eight books written here, a million words at least. c.1760 and 1840. 4 bedrooms, 3 baths. Library, keeping room with original crane fireplace, Aga kitchen, vaulted living room, screened-in porch. A c.1812 granary rebuilt as a writing studio with loft and full bath. Stone walls, orchard, meadow, vernal stream. 50 acres. 3/4 mile road frontage. Borders protected land. A serious Berkshire country property with a sky that still delivers. Offers in excess of $2,250,000 considered. The Rev. Edmund Sears grew up on a farm just down the road in Sandisfield, working it with his hands through the Berkshire seasons, a poem always singing through his head. He left at twenty-one for Union College in Schenectady, then Harvard Divinity School, then answered the call to carry the gospel to the frontier settlements of Ohio, where the forests were still being cleared, the winters were brutal, and the nearest town was days away by horse. He was a young man from a quiet hillside in the Southern Berkshires doing serious work at the raw edge of the known world. But Sandisfield had been that world not eighty years before, when James Ayrault built the first house on this very farm. In 1760 this hillside was the frontier, as wild and remote as anything Sears would find in Ohio. He came back east eventually. Settled in Wayland, Massachusetts, as a Unitarian minister. And in 1849 he wrote a carol that has been sung every Christmas since. The sky it describes, full of stars and angels near the earth, was the sky of this corner of the Southern Berkshires, where the air is clean and the nights are dark and the hills rise toward heaven in a way that stays with you long after you have gone. That remove is not historical. It is still here. Sandisfield sits two and a half hours from New York, two from Boston, and feels like neither. In the winter of 2001, nearly 150 years later, shortly after his own purchase of the property, Simon Winchester stepped outside at three in the morning and pointed his telescope at Saturn. The air was bitter cold. The sky was moonless, and the stars looked, he said, like diamonds on velvet. He came in only when the dawn chorus was beginning. He found out only later that morning the intimate connection: five years after writing that carol, Edmund Sears's own brother, Joshua, had lived on this very farm. Winchester had already written more than 20 books, many of them bestsellers. Over the next quarter century at Barnhill Farm he would go on to write eight more (soon to be nine). All were written in 'his study' he had built specifically fit for purpose: a c.1812 granary he found in serious disrepair, restored and re-erected here in 2006. The Property and the Setting Barnhill Farm sits on approximately 60 acres along Silverbrook Road, a lightly traveled, town-maintained road in Sandisfield. 3/4 of a mile of the property's own frontage runs alongside it. Stone walls border the drive. The sign at the road reads Barnhill Farm. Below it, in smaller letters: The Sears-Hawley House. Two Birthdays The original structure on this land was built around 1760 by James Ayrault, whose family had acquired this lot in Sandisfield's first land division. In 1840 a new addition was built in the Greek Revival style. The entire property was restored with care and precision in 1985 by an old-house specialist, who set aside every salvageable original element, recreated missing plaster and molding by hand, refitted the foundation with quarried stone. Not a house made to look old. An old house brought back to itself. Winchester purchased Barnhill Farm in 2001, continuing the project of lovingly updating an old house. In 2006 he renovated the original early colonial southern end of the home, transforming it from primarily being a screened-in porch: opening the interior, vaulting the ceiling to expose the timber beams, rebuilding the original galley kitchen behind the keeping room fireplace with custom cabinetry and the Aga set against the chimney, adding a mudroom entry from the driveway, and at the far end of the living space, building a dual-sided wood-burning fireplace with a new screened-in porch on its other face. Coming In Three doors face the driveway. The formal front door of the 1840 house opens into a proper entry hall. To the right, the Morning Room: a fireplace, Farrow & Ball Pink Ground on the walls. Further along, the library: dark aubergine walls, wood stove, shelves from floor to ceiling, the particular stillness of a room made entirely for books and the thinking they produce. At the end of the hall, a small bedroom, honestly more useful as a very good study. Across the hall is the keeping room, the informal heart of the 1760 house. A large fireplace anchors the space, now fitted with a wood stove. In the afternoon, light falls across the wide plank floors picking up the warmth in the old wood the way only afternoon light in a house this age manages to do. On winter mornings, breakfast happens here bathed in early light, and this is where people end up after dinner. Off to the north: a full bath with laundry, a pantry, and the larger of the two ground floor bedrooms, its door set into the corner of the west wall. Upstairs Stairs in the entry hall take you to a second floor landing with a primary bedroom, a guest room, dressing room-closet, and a full bath, with views over the orchard, quiet in the way that an upstairs room in an old house on a country road knows how to be quiet. A narrow staircase continues to a fully finished third floor attic. The Kitchen The Aga, cream and solid, is undoubtedly the heart of this bespoke kitchen. Custom cabinetry, built to the character of the house rather than imposed upon it, lines the walls. A peninsula of warm wood reaches out from the old kitchen into the newer open space beyond, bridging two centuries of cooking in a single easy gesture, and draws you into the vaulted living room. Winchester says the house is superbly designed for light, and he is right: in winter the sun rises directly into this kitchen and tracks the full length of the room through the day. Timber beams span the vaulted ceiling above wide plank floors. The living space extends toward the far end, where the dual-sided fireplace stands between the room and the screened-in porch, doing what a well-placed fireplace does: making both sides of itself worth being on. The Screened-In Porch This room is used in every season. In winter, glazed panels close off the weather and the sun warms it like a greenhouse. Breakfast out here, and afternoon tea, and wine in the evening when the fireplace is lit. Come late spring, some of the panels give way to screens and the room opens to the meadow and the sky. A long table for dinner. The telescope positioned to track the planets on their path across the southern sky. No meaningful light pollution reaches Barnhill Farm. The Granary The granary stands at the edge of the orchard, reached along a path through the perennial gardens. The apple trees spread west from it into the open meadow. It sits at exactly the right remove from the house: present but apart, close enough to walk to in the morning with your coffee, far enough removed from domestic routines to allow for contemplation and creation. Perfectly suited for guest accommodations as well. Winchester found it near Cambridge, New York: a c.1812 structure in serious disrepair. He had it carefully dismantled, restored and re-erected here in 2006. What stands today is a freestanding structure with intricate timber framing fully visible, books lining every wall, a working research library on the main level, and a sleeping loft above. A full bath is fitted at one end. Winchester steps out onto the studio stoop on mornings and breathes the air. Apple blossoms in May. Apple pressing parties in October. Winchester is taking the books and art with him. Everything else remains. The Art Studio, the Barn, and the Outbuildings The main barn is a weathered timber-frame structure whose interior Setsuko Winchester, a former journalist turned artist and historian, fitted with a chandelier from their Chelsea apartment and a mezzanine level. The design borrowed from a nearby barn she admired. An art studio and woodshop occupy the lower level. All windows in the main house were replaced with insulated units designed to match the character of the old house, and solar panels on the barn's south-facing roof cover electrical costs without disturbing the 19th century feel. The red equipment barn nearby provides an EV charging outlet and stands closer to the road. The Land The property moves from one outdoor space to the next, and no two are alike. Close to the house, a stone patio with a fire pit. Beyond it, a raised bed garden, and frog pond give you other spots to sit and contemplate, quietly listen to birdsong in the morning, or hear the peepers start at dusk. The orchard produces cider apples, and an abundance of peaches. Wild blueberry bushes run along the treeline where the old growth apple trees give way to forest. Setsuko has never used a pesticide or artificially fertilized the plants, relying instead on the compost produced on the property and finding the right spot for each varietal. In the pine grove beyond the meadow, the light changes completely. Pine needles carpet the ground. Adirondack chairs and a hammock have lived in here for years. Even in July it is cool and unhurried, the kind of place where time moves differently. A vernal stream meanders through the woodland beyond, heard before it is seen. The property borders protected land. 50' into the woods and the house is completely gone. The canopy closes. It is quiet in a way that is easier to feel than to explain. What This Is Edmund Hamilton Sears grew up down the road and never forgot the night-time sky which came upon a midnight clear. Simon Winchester found it, wrote his books and stayed 25 years. Setsuko Winchester arrived to continue work on the property while carefully maintaining its early American character. She shaped the land, the barn, the gardens, into what they are today. The house has been restored with skill and lived in with intelligence. The granary is intact. The orchard blooms every May. The sky has not changed. Come and see what that feels like.
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