Brandymore Castle
An easy walk within Madison Manor Park, off the paved bicycle/pedestrian path next to I-66, stands a quartz outcrop of rock near the border between the City of Falls Church and Arlington.
Brandymore Castle is a natural landmark, significant because it was used as a locating point to determine the boundaries of at least five early 18th-century Northern Neck proprietary land grants. Brandymore Castle was a recognizable landmark as a rock formation with a massive outcropping of quartz situated at the north end of Madison Manor Hill, above the point where Four Mile Run formed a loop prior to the construction of Interstate 66.
This rocky outcrop was named for its castle-like appearance. It was first described in 1724 by surveyor Charles Broadwater as “the Rock Stones called Brandymore Castle.”
The exact location of Brandymore was in dispute until 1973, when Robert Moxham, a geophysicist in the Isotope Geology Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey, presented research placing the landmark on Madison Manor Hill rather than Minor Hill. A County historical marker formerly identified the site, but it was removed during the construction of Interstate 66 in the late 1970s.
Although the residential development of Madison Manor surrounds the hill and the construction of I-66 has altered the setting of the rock formation, as seen in the early 18th century, the immediate area of the rock formation remains intact. Brandymore Castle is a natural landmark that links settlement patterns in Arlington during the early 18th century.
In 1649, Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, granted seven Englishmen all the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers as a proprietary colony - despite being in exile and not having the power to do so. The grant was known as the Northern Neck land grant, encompassing 5,282,000 acres of Virginia’s Northern Neck. This land had previously been (and partially still inhabited by) the Monacan Indian Nation, the Doeg, the Mannahoac, and the Powhatan, among other groups, and had been transferred without their permission.
Surveyor Charles Broadwater had traveled from Surrey in England to Virginia several times in the six years prior to finally settling in the area in 1716. He and his wife, Elizabeth Semmes West, had two children. He immediately became involved with the community, building a wharf near Great Hunt Creek (now Alexandria) and becoming a vestryman for Truro parish (largely in southern Fairfax County.)
On January 15, 1724, Charles received one of the Northern Neck land grant parcels NN-A-113, a 151-acre tract straddling the line between Fairfax and now Arlington. This was only a small part of his land holdings; between 1724 - 1726 he owned 2,089 acres.
Landowners were required to fulfill several requirements to ‘perfect’ or take complete claim of the grant, including paying taxes, surveying the property boundaries, and constructing a building. Virginia was still only minimally developed, with hundreds of acres with barely a sign of European presence, so memorable natural elements in the landscape were essential wayfinders for surveyors and early settlers. The earliest named record of the quartz outcrop near the border between the City of Falls Church and Arlington is by Charles Broadwater himself, who described it in 1724.
The origin of the name is unknown- there is no Brandymore in Surrey, and Charles Broadwater did not refer how he settled on the name or who had named it before him. However, the name stuck not only in his notations but also in official land records. Brandymore Castle went on to be mentioned in five other Northern Neck land grants as a key landmark in Virginia's earliest proprietary land surveys.
In 1986, Arlington County’s Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board (HALRB) recommended that the County Board designate Brandymore Castle as a local historic district to recognize its role in and representation of early settlement in Arlington.
The limestone outcrop has changed over the centuries as it has weathered almost 300 years since it was first seen by Charles Broadwater. It stands as a tangible reminder of the natural beauty that once dominated a rural landscape. This oft-forgotten stone outcrop was once a beacon for hundreds of acres of undisturbed forest.
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