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Washington Uncommonly sumptuous for a B&B and one of the few with a four-diamond AAA rating, this hilltop brick manor house was opened to guests in 1995 after eight months of top-to-bottom renovations. Mary Ann Kuhn, a former Washington Post reporter and CBS News producer, found a new calling as a restorer of old buildings and as a hostess par excellence. Sparing no expense, vivacious Mary Ann produced plush common rooms and four deluxe guest rooms in the main Federal house built in 1850 by Middleton Miller, who manufactured Confederate uniforms during the Civil War. She turned the former slave’s quarters behind into a romantic little cottage and boarded her horses in a rear barn on the six-acre hunt-country estate. The bedrooms are sights to behold. Each comes with a marble bath and a working fireplace. Fine linens dress the queen or king beds. Bottles of spring water are at the ready, and chocolates are placed at bedside during turndown service. The queensize wicker Chartwell sleigh bed in the front-corner Ivy Room is a reproduction of one from Winston Churchill’s family home in England. A leather loveseat and a wing chair take advantage of the mountain view from the other front-corner Hunt Country Room. An antique bookshelf becomes a closet in the rear Morning Room, pretty in yellow with floral fabrics. A large 1830s vanity topped by a mirror in the bedroom is the focal point in the Man’s Vanity Room. Bath facilities are enclosed on either side. The most sought-after quarters are in the rear cottage. It has a small living room with TV, a little refrigerator and stove, and a bathroom with a jacuzzi tub from which you can look out the window at the mountains. Upstairs is a bedroom with beamed cathedral ceiling and a queensize sleigh bed. Guests enjoy afternoon tea and wine in the formal drawing room. A focal point is an 1830s grand piano upon which rests a striking bronze sculpture of George Bush pitching a horseshoe, the work of syndicated cartoonist Patrick Oliphant, Mary Ann’s ex-husband. The most visually striking space is the dining room, where five round tables are dressed in long white linens, sterling flatware and Herrend china for breakfast amidst museum-quality hunting prints and an extravagant floral display. Every course arrives on a silver platter. Fresh orange juice, fruit and homemade muffins are preliminaries to such treats as raspberry pancakes with country sausage or eggs benedict with smoked trout and asparagus. Linger over coffee on the front porch and enjoy the view of the mountains.
For more information: www.middletoninn.com. Four rooms and one cottage with private baths. Doubles, $260 to $325
weekends, $195 to $225 midweek. Cottage, $425 weekends, $275 midweek.
Two-night minimum for October and holidays. Children over 12. No
smoking. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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