The Belle Meade Plantation

Arrived in Nashville safe and sound. But the weather's freakin' COLD! It's in the 30's and the forecast is calling for freezing rain for the next few days. Ugh, I definitely did not pack for this.

In an attempt to somewhat hide from the cold during the day, I head out for a tour of the Belle Meade Plantation - which has been 'christened' as the "Queen of Tennessee Planations" In its day, the Plantation consisted of 3,500 acres.

The Belle Meade's farming operations from the 1840's through the 1880's were said to be the most successful in the Mid-South for almost half a century. In addition, it's stable was recognized as the most famous nursery of thoroughbred racing stock West of the Appalachians.

Cool old carriages...



This is the view, from the porch above the front door. Not too shabby for a front lawn.


The house was equipped with some very interesting amenities. Heck, even NEW bathroom showers aren't this cool!

I'm sure I've seen benches like this in the past. In fact, it's likely my mother has purchased more than one of these antique caned benches over the years. Interestingly, they are not just pretty, caned benchs seat.

It's called a cooling bench. If/when someone died on the plantation, they wouldn't stop the work day to bury the body...nope, the work needed to continue. So they would lay the dead on the cooling bench and place tubs of ice below the bench and at the head and the feet.

The caning would enable the cooled air to vent through and keep body cool until they could attend to a proper burial. Yuck.

This is a prehistoric call box. Ok, not really prehistoric...actually pretty cool for it's time. Each room in the main house was wired with a buzzer. Outside the kitchen in the servant's room, was the call box the buzzers were all wired to. When someone would ring for assisance, the bell would sound, and a magnet would point the arror to the room number from which the call came. Then assistance would be sent to that room.

Now this is a serious brick shithouse! Actually, this is the house's smoke-house. They entertained so much at the Belle Mead that they would smoke over 20,000 pounds of pork alone per year. This smokehouse was jammed with smoked meats hanging from rafters inside.