Stafford Landing House

EDITOR'S NOTE: The house is still standing, with the Drikung Dharma Surya Buddhist Temple having been built around it.


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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:

Stafford Landing:
The site was named by the present owners after Stafford County, of which it was a part until 1731 when Prince William County was formed. The property was later included in Fairfax County when it was established in 1742.

Owned by the Randolph and Sisson families for over 100 years, the property was purchased by Dr. Oscar Coumbe in 1872. About 1890, according to local tradition, the present structure was built by Dr. Coumbe for use as a summer house. Part of the foundation of an earlier 1 1/2-story log house was used for the present house.

There was once a summer kitchen in the backyard, but it is no longer in existence. The former dining room in the main structure was converted into a kitchen, and the old sitting room into a dining room. There are plaster rosettes on the nine-foot ceilings on the first floor and an attractive oak staircase in the front hall. The original slate mantels have been covered with removable dentil molding.

A 50-foot, quartz-lined well in the front yard, said by the owners to have been dug about 1800, serves as the present water supply.

Adopted state and county plans call for the future widening of Ox Road (Route 123) in front of Stafford Landing, probably into a four-lane divided highway.