Blenheim (Maryland)

Blenheim was a mansion built around 1760 by Richard Lee III on a Charles County, Maryland estate near present-day Newburg and Morgantown, on the Potomac River just below the mouth of the Port Tobacco River, and named for the 1704 Battle of Blenheim. The square, two-story brick house rose beneath a platform and cupola and held stained glass windows, a winding staircase, and marble and slate flooring, with grounds that included brick stables, a dairy, a greenhouse and a walled garden; in 1798 it carried the highest valuation of any private residence in Charles County. The Lee family produced three Maryland governors, and though the mansion was demolished in the late nineteenth century, its record survives as an example of colonial Chesapeake plantation architecture.