Description

Some houses have an address. This one has a name: Somerset—Old English for a land of summer.

Charles Parker, who gave Asheville the Grove Arcade, designed this house in 1925. It rose two years after the town itself, among the founding estates whose Tudor lines still set the town's character. A century on, it stands as it was meant to.

Stucco and stone walls, an arched stone entry, the original slate roof still overhead, the carriage doors still hung. Inside are five bedrooms and five-and-a-half baths across some 6,699 square feet—built for the cold months as much as the warm. A wood fire in the living room. A great room that opens to the garden. A wine cellar below. The main suite keeps its own fire and a balcony over the front garden.

Outside, the name comes true: stone terraces step down to a heated pool and a gazebo, on 1.65 level acres of mature grounds.

Biltmore Forest is a town of its own—under three square miles, set between the Biltmore Estate, the Blue Ridge Parkway and Asheville, ten minutes north. Chartered in 1923 and laid out on the same natural principles as the Estate, it has changed little since: its own police, the Donald Ross course at Biltmore Forest Country Club, winding streets under a kept canopy, two parks, and Historic Biltmore Village close at hand.

Houses of this age and order seldom reach the market here, and almost never on ground so flat and so private. Somerset is one. Some houses you must stand inside to know.

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