The stone plantation house of Ben Lomond is open to the public to show its role in August 1861 during the First Battle of Manassas - an important Civil War battle.
Before visiting the house we were shown the modest (but unusually stone built) slave quarters.
This small house was home to 10-20 people.
Our house tour begin with a downstairs room which would have been for formal entertaining but which was taken over for use by injured Confederate soldiers from the battlefield. To demonstrate, just a few straw 'beds' are laid out but in practice the injured would have been jam-packed into this room.
On the other side of the room a slightly more comfortable corner for a Confederate officer.
Upstairs there were similar quarters as well as one room full of furniture which was home to the man who owned the commandeered house and his two sons. Very cramped quarters for all.
Downstairs again we were in the dining room which became an impromptu surgery for removal of bullets and sadly often also the removal of limbs. We learned that it was disease rather than injury itself which was responsible for the deaths of most of the soldiers but also that surgical techniques and hygiene advanced greatly in the US during the civil war period.
It was a very informative tour. The tour was enhanced with the use of audio presentations to simulate the noise of a house packed full of sick and dying men. The other 'enhancement' to the tour was in the form of smell. In the house it was almost overpowering - a cloying sweet/rotten smell which replicated the terrible odor of gangrene.
A very interesting, if rather gruesome, tour.
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