WINDSOR CASTLE, off Church St., in a section of Smithfield known as Jericho, is a story-and-a-half stuccoed brick house with dormers. Its tree-shaded enclosure was once terraced to the water's edge. The wide center hall opens into four square rooms on each floor. Here lived Arthur Smith upon whose land Smithfield was built.

Built circa 1750 by Arthur Smith IV, founder of Smithfield, the Windsor Castle manor house with some of its dependencies and its surrounding 186 acres are all that is left of the original 1450 acre land grant of 1637. Six generations of the Smith family owned Windsor Castle, and only two other families have owned it since.

The bluff, overlooking the juncture of the Pagan River and Cypress Creek and on which Windsor Castle sits today, was once appropriately called "King of All Places." The manor house, measuring over 7000 square feet, reflects a charming blend of 18th century four-over-four Tidewater Virginia colonial architecture and the later addition (1840) of Greek Revival updating. The interior features large formal rooms with 12.5 ft. ceilings, original quarter-sawn random width floors, and, on the main floor and in the basement are the traditional wide center passages with oversized double doors at each end - Tidewater Virginia air conditioning!

Complimenting the manor house are a number of historic dependencies, most notably: on the left, facing the creek, the original detached kitchen, the smoke house, and the large granary; and on the right are the corn crib and the manager's office. Some of these dependencies date from the mid-eighteenth century, some from the early to mid-nineteenth century.

There is a small cemetery behind the house in the woods on the bluff overlooking the Pagan River ... some speculate that it could contain the remains of Arthur Smith IV although the headstones in evidence do not contain such a name.

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This Page Updated:December 12, 2016