The 2015 North Carolina Quilt Symposium Inc. will be held May 28-30 at the Bonclarken Conference Center in Flat Rock.Read it all.
Entitled Mountain Stitches and sponsored by the Western North Carolina Quilt Guild and the North Carolina Quilt Symposium Inc., the symposium features classes by some of the country's best-known quilt teachers, including Sue Nickels, Wendy Butler Berns, Laura Wasilowski and Flat Rock's own Georgia Bonesteel.
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| St John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church |
[St John in the Wilderness Episcopal Church] plans to expand its parish hall and education building this fall to create the needed space for those young families and for its older members who use the facilities.Read it all.
"The whole thrust is we are calling this ‘The Next Chapter,' " [the Rev. John Morton, rector,] said.
St. John set a goal of $800,000 for the expansion and began raising money over the winter. So far, the church has raised a little more than $550,000.
The current project is the first expansion of the parish hall and education buildings in more than 50 years. Both structures were built in the 1960s. . .
Fletcher Town Council has agreed to sell 4 acres of land the town owns off Rockwell Drive to the developers of an indoor sports arena, financing the deal over a decade.Sounds interesting.
Following months of negotiation between developers and town officials, council this month approved a purchase agreement that would allow SoccerZone WNC to acquire the property for $165,000 over 10 years following a six-month period of due diligence.
In December, council members had agreed to sell or lease part of a 93-acre tract the town owns near Meritor Inc. after being approached by SoccerZone WNC's partner, including local insurance agent Chuck Roper and former East Henderson High athlete Darren Brown. . .
SoccerZone WNC plans to offer two indoor turf fields and perhaps outdoor fields as well, along with an "upper deck sports bar" for parents to enjoy while watching their kids play below.
Indoor soccer will only be "about a quarter" of the business, Roper said. Developers hope to offer flag football, basketball, dodgeball, pickleball, birthday parties, sports clinics, summer camps and indoor practice space for school athletic teams. . .
The N.C. Department of Transportation will hold a drop-in public meeting on Thursday, Jan. 29, regarding the proposed project to improve Greenville Highway at the misaligned Erkwood Drive and Shepherd Street intersections.Read it all, and here is NCDOT's proposed fix:
The purpose of the project is to improve the existing roadway network and to realign Erkwood Drive and Shepherd Street to create a four-leg intersection with Greensville Highway. In doing this, a more direct east-west connection will be formed for the area south of Hendersonville, the NCDOT said.
The meeting will be held from 4 to 7 p.m. at Flat Rock Village Hall. Interested citizens may attend at any time as there will be no formal presentation. NCDOT representatives will be available to answer questions and take comments regarding the project. People may also submit comments and questions in writing. Comments received will be taken into consideration as the project develops. . .
For Europeans who opposed German Nazism, the years of World War II were fraught with danger, deprivation and displacement. Treska Lindsey, 90, not only survived those years but managed to record poignantly her family's experiences in an illustrated journal she kept by her side as they worked in occupied France after fleeing Belgium.Read it all.
Illustrated with beautifully detailed sketches of her family at work in the countryside and the people of France they met, the journal traveled with her the long miles between her homeland and Flat Rock, where she and her husband came to settle.
When she was 87 years old, at her brother's urging, the journal was shown to a French publisher and printed. Now "The Brutish and Magical Years: 1940-1944" has been published in English, and her family and friends are inviting the public to a celebration of the book.
Born Therese Gevaert, she was the daughter of artist Edgar Gevaert and the granddaughter, on her mother's side, of sculptor George Minne. Hers, she said, was a family of artists. So it was only natural that, as a 16-year-old girl, uprooted from her affluent life in the Belgian countryside, she would turn to art to describe their new lives as refugees working as farm laborers and lumberjacks. . .
Want to go?
What: Celebration of the English translation of The Brutish and Magical Years: 1940-1944 by Treska Lindsey
When: 2-4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16
Where: Highland Lake Cove in Flat Rock
Extra: Lindsey will sign books and exhibit her artwork. Refreshments will be served. Copies of the book also are available at The Fountainhead Bookstore in Hendersonville and Malaprop’s in Asheville.
The new owners of historic Mountain Lodge plan to nurse the 1820s house back to life before using it as a summer residence and opening it up for a Historic Flat Rock fundraiser.Read it all.
Historic Flat Rock Inc. bought the property in a sale approved in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Columbia, S.C., and immediately sought a buyer who had the ability and will to spend the money — close to $1 million — needed to stabilize and preserve it. Historic Flat Rock Inc. officials believe they hit a homerun with the buyers — Julien Smythe, whose Flat Rock roots date to the early 1900s, and his wife, Lori.
For Julien Smythe, spending summers in Flat Rock is a return to his boyhood visits to the Many Pines estate that connects his family to the North Carolina mountains. . .
One other connection made the buyers seem like destiny. Joe Oppermann, a historic preservation architect and member of Historic Flat Rock Inc., is married to Langdon Smythe Oppermann, Julien's first cousin. The couple owns Many Pines; Oppermann is guiding the renovation for the Smythes. . .
America in Bloom judges visited Hendersonville, Flat Rock, Laurel Park and Mills River last June. The judges evaluate the community based on its flower displays, landscaping, trees, environmental efforts, heritage preservation and overall impression, make recommendations and write nominations for national awards.Read it all.
Presenting a report card to local leaders on Friday morning, America in Bloom judge Jack Clasen said he and co-judge Linda Cromer were disappointed that the national AIB committee chose another city for the commercial streetscape award.
"I've been doing this for 13 years and I'm usually very level-headed. I'm very calm," he said. "I understand how difficult it is (to judge). But I was actually very upset that you did not win that special award for commercial streetscape for Main Street in Hendersonville. Linda and I both felt that the Main Street renovation is first class."
Clasen said he felt so strongly about the award that "a bit of a shakeup" resulted.
Clasen gave the report card at the City Operations Center in a session attended by the mayors of Hendersonville, Laurel Park and Flat Rock, Henderson County America in Bloom Committee members, the Tourism Development Authority and city and county officials. . .
A committee launched the local America In Bloom effort last spring with funding from the municipalities. The committee plans to invite AIB judges back for a second evaluation next summer after working on improvements. . .
The judges praised Flat Rock, Laurel Park and Hendersonville for their heritage preservation efforts and recommended house tours and walking tours to raise the profile of the historic assets. . .
. . . Funny observations of chicken behavior are shared, as is advice on issues like mucking out coops or preventing older hens pecking at young chicks.Read it all.
The dozen members present at [Barbara Glassman's, aka “Madame Poulet,”] home cringed at the connotation that their gatherings were a sort of “hen party” — rather, they prefer to think of themselves as an intrepid breed of urban chicken farmers in Henderson County.
“We are women who kind of knew each other before, but we instantly bonded over chickens,” Glassman says. “It’s an obsession.”
Famed quilting instructor Georgia Bonesteel [of Flat Rock] is a member of the Hen Society who has been keeping chickens for about five years.
“I think it’s genetic,” says Bonesteel, adding that her grandfather raised chickens. “I got them mostly for the eggs, honestly. I won’t buy eggs in the supermarket.”. . .
In addition to spotting and seizing the opportunity to help usher in a cider sea change, the foursome [at Flat Rock Cider Works] also saw the chance to give North Carolina's apple country a brand it could call its own. They set out to make Naked Apple a truly Henderson County product, starting with the fruit.Read it all. Jim Sparks and Tom Davis, part of the Flat Rock Cider Works team, are the former owners of the Highland Lake Golf Club, now The Park at Flat Rock. Connections, connections. . .
The company has its own orchards — one they lease and one they own. It's this vertical integration that makes the cidery unique: They can take their cider from the orchard, through the production process, through bottling, and to the final customer. . .
Flat Rock park planners went back to the drawing board after construction bids for a welcome center and public restrooms came in $100,000 over budget. . .Read it all.
I'ON LOWNDES HOUSE
Late 19th Century
In 1847, Charles Baring sold Diamond in the Desert to Richard Lowndes. Mr. Lowndes conveyed to his son, I'on a tract on the eastern end of the property. It was there that I'on erected the lattice trimmed, towered porch residence in the style of late nineteenth century homes.
The residence is located beside the large outcropping of rock for which Flat Rock is named. According to the legend the Indians held their great annual councils seated around this large flat rock long before the famed Buncombe turnpike encouraged low country aristocrats to establish Flat Rock as a summer colony. Thus Cherokee Indians, white pioneers, tidewater newcomers, alike, enjoyed the cool air of the heights just as do the present day audiences of the State Theater, which now occupies these historic grounds.
MOUNTAIN LODGE 1827
Majestic Mountain Lodge is the patriarch of the great old dwellings of Flat Rock .Built as a grand manor house by Charles Baring it has fulfilled its auspicious origin through a succession of distinguished owners.
In 1853 it was acquired by the illustrious Trenholm family. Edward Trenholm was a member of a cotton mercantile firm of Liverpool and Charleston which owned the battleship Alabama. The ship became famous for running the Union blockade of Southern ports. Edward's brother, George, was second Secretary of the Confederate Treasury.
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| Caption text: Jane Angier's figure in the foreground helps scale the enormous size of the slow growing English boxwood planted about 1830 by Susan Baring |
Edward's daughter-in-law, gracious Alicia, entertained the South's leaders at the Lodge. Her father, Roswell Sabine Ripley, was the honored artillery officer in command of coastal and water defenses of Charleston under General Beauregard. His two volume history of the Mexican War was used as a West Point textbook. While living in Europe after the War Napoleon III requested him to take charge of the fortifications of Paris. Alicia authored a booklet on Flat Rock still in publication through the courtesy of Mary Trenholm Kemper, her daughter.
The George Baldwins--she a member of the Middleton and King families, carried on the cultural traditions of the Old South at the Lodge. Dr. and Mrs. Edward Jones, their successors, spent lavishly of their oil millions to remodel the dwelling adding the columned portico.
The Newton Duke Angiers of the famous tobacco and lumber families added mid-20th century distinction to the venerable old estate.
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| Top photo: Lida Angier, Newton Angier's sister, and Jane in the great dining hall of Mountain Lodge. The wallpaper is hand painted in the irridescent peacock colors. Bottom photo: Newton Duke Angier beside a painting of his grandmother, Lida Duke, who married Jonathan Cicero Angier. |
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| Jane Angier, recent mistress of Mountain Lodge, on her beloved portico. |
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| Photo credit: Hendersonville Lightning |
