Stone archways with cast-iron gates guard the entrance to this distinctive house, which has served as a bed and breakfast and a retreat center.
Once an unassuming Cape-style home, this house is blanketed in stone on three sides now. With windows and a doorway of a keystone design, this home evokes thoughts of a castle, an ancient farmhouse, or a church.
There are many ways to enter it, including one entrance that leads into a three-season solarium that overlooks the gardens and connects to the kitchen. The kitchen is a large square space with wood cabinetry, a tiled floor, an electric cooktop, and a chandelier with a medallion, one of many such light fixtures in the home. The dining area sits next to a wood-burning fireplace with a wall oven.
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Off a hallway highlighted by two-stained glass windows — rescued from shuttered churches, including one in Germany — is the formal dining room and a living room with intricate crown molding and a bow window. This floor also includes two bedrooms, both with hardwood floors, an office, and a full bath with laundry facilities.
On the second floor, a sitting room with skylights separates two bedrooms at opposite ends of a hallway.
To the left at the top of the stairs, the master suite is a study in tranquility, with white trim, a fireplace painted to match, and soft-blue walls. The furthermost point in the room looks like a lancet window, but it’s really a door. This exit, which is crowned by a sharply angled window, leads to broad deck. The room also has a built-in dresser and two deep closets.
The master bath is roomy and sunny, compliments of white ceramic tiles, three windows in a corner of the room, and two skylights positioned above the whirlpool tub. There are two vanities opposite each other and a glassed-in shower.
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To the right at the top of the stairs is a bedroom where the walls and ceiling are handpainted with calming clouds and bright blue skies. A full bath completes this floor.
The garden level was used as the bed and breakfast, which remains licensed but is not in operation. There are two bedrooms here: “Snow White” and the “Amethyst Room,” both named based on their paint schemes. A dining area separates the two bedrooms and leads to a most pleasing place: a four-season glassed enclosure jutting into the yard.
The house sits on 1.8-acre lot, most of which is downward sloping, heavily wooded land. The single-car garage is under the home. The backyard has a concrete wall sheathed in silver lace vine and wisteria, providing a green embrace to the garden, with its fountain, statue, and winding stone walkways. Adjacent is a stone pavilion.
The listing broker, Melissa Silva of Windhill Realty in Ipswich, will hold an open house from 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 16.
THE DETAILS
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