Houses christened with formal names never fail to capture the imagination. Think of Daphne du Maurier’s Manderley in Rebecca or Jane Austen’s Pemberley from Pride and Prejudice. Set on the banks of the Tred Avon River in Easton, Avondale is that type of home—a grand pile where 250 years’ worth of history speaks with every creak of a floorboard.

When a preservation-minded couple with three school-age children purchased the 40-acre property as a weekend retreat—their primary home is in Rehoboth—the 10,000-square-foot manse and its outbuildings had been derelict for many years. With a vision of restoring the house to its once stately form, the new owners called upon architect Charles Goebel with the added goal of updating it to serve their active lifestyle. “Our approach has been to preserve what’s worth preserving and to undo past mistakes that are not compatible with the history of the house,” he notes. So masterful was his restoration that it earned him a John Russell Pope award this year from the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art.

Dating to 1770, the original Georgian three-bay portion of the house was built by Freeborn Banning, who came from a Chesapeake seafaring family, and it remained with his descendants for several generations. Significant additions were made during the 1920s, later followed by an insensitive full-scale remodel in the early 2000s which stalled, leaving the home vacant and neglected until 2018. “Additions had been put on additions over the decades and there was no real coherence or flow to it,” Goebel relays.

One only needed to look at the rambling exterior to see a roadmap of the many changes the house had undergone. For instance, each add-on incorporated different types of brick, most of which needed to be repointed or repaired. “It was kind of a museum of brick, if you will,” cracks the architect, who limewashed the blocks to lend cohesiveness and dressed up the façade with a Chippendale-style balustrade.

Inside, the home was a warren of dark, low-ceilinged spaces, starting with the entry hall which functioned as a reception room with a fireplace but no stairs. To create a more ceremonial welcome, Goebel conceived a striking circular staircase. At that time Jess Weeth, who had worked with the family on their primary residence, came on board to steer the interiors. “When I first saw the stair framing, it took my breath away to watch this sculptural component come to life with that amazing view behind it,” recalls the designer. “And what better way to capture that moment than with a more rustic finish like plaster.”

Layout-wise, the abode flows from that center hall, with living room and family room to the left side of the entry, and the dining room, kitchen, sunroom and other entertaining spaces to the right. The second floor plays host to the original library, the primary suite and the son’s and one of the daughter’s rooms, while the previously unfinished third-floor attic contains a lofty bedroom and bunk space for the eldest daughter.

For the interiors, Weeth’s goal was to create a generational family home that exuded comfort while honoring the period architecture and idyllic location. “Easton itself has so much history, right down to the millwork details in the old buildings in town,” she explains. “It was important to balance the design feeling fresh enough to fit a young family while simultaneously having that heritage component. It’s a very quiet place, and there’s something to how powerful and strong the setting is, so it was about complementing the scenery and matching the patina of the home without having the decoration steal the show.”

Main-level spaces toe the line between formal and fun. The living room, which looks out onto the reflecting pool, pairs polished furnishings with a Susan Harter mural that, notes Weeth, “blurs the lines between inside and out,” while the sunroom holds a long custom table for gloriously messy crab feasts. A tucked-in bar room reflects its waterfront scenery with baby-blue lacquer cabinetry and an antique mirror backsplash; there, reclaimed French marble floors from Francois & Co. harken to the past, conveying Old World style.

A sense of age is present upstairs, too, in the vaulted, timber-framed library, notable for its overhead beams which were rescued from a local church that burned down in the 1920s. “You can actually smell the character of the wood when you’re in that room,” says Weeth. Because the space was uninsulated, Goebel applied insulation to the roof’s exterior to maintain the soaring ceiling.

That dedication to preservation can also be seen in the restoration of the property’s gazebo, an architectural folly at the termination of the reflecting pool. After many decades of neglect, it was in sad shape with missing shingles and balustrades, but today it is the estate’s crown jewel.

“Whoever we’ve shown photos of this project to has been touched and charmed by what we’ve created,” reflects Goebel. “It strikes an emotion and really resonates. You get the feeling that this is just a romantic, wonderful place to be.”