As on the plate, so too in the public rooms and bedrooms: attention to detail is everywhere. The William Morris wallpaper was printed by hand from the original woodcuts. Pre-dinner nibbles include a dollhouse-sized potato filled with caviar. Breakfast, served on Bernardaud china, includes homemade muffins, croissants, jam, sausage, granola and crème fraîche. Afternoon tea comes to your room in a pot covered with a Chinese cozy.
As on the plate, so too in the public rooms and bedrooms: attention to detail is everywhere. The William Morris wallpaper was printed by hand from the original woodcuts. Pre-dinner nibbles include a dollhouse-sized potato filled with caviar. Breakfast, served on Bernardaud china, includes homemade muffins, croissants, jam, sausage, granola and crème fraîche. Afternoon tea comes to your room in a pot covered with a Chinese cozy.
Eight rooms and four opulent suites occupy the upper floors of the old garage. It has long since been transformed by the addition of a tranquil garden, verandas, oriel windows, porticoes and a new, $2.5 million kitchen with two tables for six, where the cooks work in black skullcaps and black tunics to the tune of recorded Georgian chant ("soothing," says the chef). The whole place is decorated in a stagy neo-Victorian style, all swags and tassels, that was devised by Joyce Conwy Evans, a London theatrical designer.
The "living room," where the old kitchen stood, is a case in point, filled with Indian tables whose legs are adorned with carved elephant heads, a Moroccan table, a tapestry, a potted palm, silk draperies backed with purple satin, chandeliers accented with Fortuny silk, Provençal and Venetian sconces, a dropped ceiling that makes the asymmetrical room look rectangular and a 17th-century parquet floor from a French château. The inn turns Mies on his head, adopting "More is more" as its maxim. Three other suites, which must be rented as a group, are tucked into a nearby Victorian farmhouse. Another bedroom and sitting room—the latter featuring a portrait of George Washington (who else?)—are located in the so-called Mayor's House, circa 1740, which has a walled garden.
In addition to the inn, O'Connell and Lynch now own nineteen pieces of property in the village, including the old tavern (now a collection of shops) and the second floor of the post office (where reservations are taken). They employ a staff of ninety-eight, including people from Russia and Britain as well as Virginia and Ohio, serve more than 32,000 meals a year and pay $227,000 a year in town taxes. For a time, tensions flared between the partners and the townspeople, who feared being overwhelmed by the inn, but now Lynch is the village's vice mayor, and in 2002 the pair were named Citizens of the Year by the local Rappahannock News.
If you pay a call, try to make it in the autumn, for the leaves, or in the last half of May, when the air will be sweet, the vistas will be clear and you may well find an outrageous explosion of peonies in your room.
Double rooms from $370 to $895, suites from $600 to $1,235, depending on the season, including Continental breakfast and afternoon tea; Friday is $145 additional per room, Saturday, $245 additional and Sunday, $75 additional; and during May and October, there is an additional charge of $100 a night per room. Middle and Main Sts., Washington, Va. 540-675-3800; fax: 540-675-3100; theinnatlittlewashington.com.
