The Brown Homeplace-Wedding Venue

The former Henry Williamson Brown homestead is located two miles south of Bethel on the present highway 11. The house, which was constructed on the former Martin farm, represents one of the best preserved and most generously proportioned Colonial Revival farmhouses located in the Bethel vicinity. The dwelling displays academic features of the massed-plan house form with a high hip-roof front dormer. The most expressive detail of the three bay front façade is a wide wraparound porch, which has an entrance bay projecting gable roof stoop with a second tier, hip-roof porch above. Doric columns-on-piers support the porch, and the front corners of the porch are rounded. Two projecting rear/side bays have gable roofs and large knee braces beneath the eaves. A rear hip-roof ell has a wraparound screened porch that connects to hip-roof rear room.

The site is dominated by a mature grove of pecan trees and a small section of decorative iron fencing remains in front of the house. A well-maintained grouping of out buildings is located to the rear of the house and includes several that date from the early twentieth century. Primary among them are a hip-roof washhouse/Delco Electric Plant/carriage house combination and a large triple-portal transverse frame barn with hayloft. Also located on the property is a typical Pitt County tobacco barn and dynamite shed.