Little Hollin Hall House

This historic home is a private residence, so please don't trespass on the property to view the home.


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Here follows an excerpt from the 1970 Fairfax County Master Inventory of Historic Sites which contained entries from the Historic American Buildings Survey Inventory:

The name Hollin Hall was first applied to a Thomson family estate in Yorkshire, England. George Mason, III married Ann Thomson, and this house was named for her family home, though it is not certain when this happened.

George Mason IV, who built Gunston Hall, by 1779 had given the Hollin Hall property to his son Thomson Mason, although he was also building a large house for him very close to this site. Thomson Mason and his wife moved to the new house but it was destroyed by fire about 1812, and they returned to the original house. It was then known as the "spinning house" because of the Scottish and Irish spinners who had worked in it.

The house passed from Mason family in 1852, when it was sold to Edward Gibbs, one of the Quaker group which settled in the Woodlawn-Mount Vernon area. In 1881, the Thomson family purchased 300 acres of the land from Gibbs and began operating Thompson's Dairy which was a major supplier of dairy products to the metropolitan Washington area until operations were discontinued in 1971.

About 1925, industrialist Harley Wilson built a large brick house nearby which he named Hollin Hall. The older structure then became known as Little Hollin Hall. During the ownership of John McPherson, about 1940, the house was restored and a wing added by restorationist Walter Macomber. In 1954, Ernest Frank, Director of Design for Colonial Williamsburg, made further additions. Mrs. Joan Lyon, granddaughter of E. C. Gibbs, stated that her grandfather had subsequently found the place much changed, recognizing only a few of the interior features as being what he had remembered before the 1940 changes.

An 1855 letter from one of the Mason family refers to a family cemetery, but at present its specific location is unknown.