The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Home is a sanctuary
This Deep River property with a brook and pond enchants
Peaceful and serene, this warm home is a sanctuary full of love.
“I can feel the warmth from the people that lived there ahead of me,” said seller Jere Rae Mansfield.
Colette Harron, listing agent for William Pitt Sotheby’s said the special property, with its circular driveway and fencedin yard, is a fantasy world.
“You feel very in ShangriLa,” she said. “It’s like paradise.”
In 2006, when Mansfield, a California native, walked into the house she immediately knew she wanted it.
No negotiations needed, she told her husband. Moments later, they owned it.
The beautiful cast iron wood burning stove caught her eye when she walked into the foyer. From there, she noted the great room’s high ceilings, reclaimed barn wood paneling and wide planked king’s wood flooring.
Unfinished Stella Rosa Brazilian granite floors in the kitchen, dining room and foyer give the house a country feel. A tile wood burning stove from Sweden graces the dining room.
“Its green, Kelly green, which in very unusual, which sort of makes it a great room to decorate because you have to go with it or against it,” Mansfield said.
With a bar, two dishwashers, plenty of cupboards and a butcher block counter, the kitchen is “very workable,” according to Mansfield. She enjoys having friends over and cooking together while gazing out the windows at the beautiful property.
Built in 1790, the original oneroom structure was converted to a studio in the 1930s by sculptor Henry Kreis, who lived across the street. One day Mansfield saw a woman peeking through a window and asked if she could help her.
It turned out to be Kreis’s daughter Luisa Kreis Whiting.
“She said, I grew up in this house,” Mansfield said. “She was just so admiring of the house and said that it had changed and that it was just a lovely memorial to her father.”
Upstairs, the high ceilinged master suite offers a sitting area with a wide paneled fireplace, wide planked floors and a slider to a terrace overlooking a brook.
“[It] is so lovely in the summer,” Mansfield said. “I just opened it up and listened to the bullfrogs.”
The roomy master bath has a dressing room, a separate water closet, a fireplace, a cast iron stove and a claw foot tub.
“It’s very romantic,” Mansfield said.
All three bedrooms have ensuite bathrooms.
Up a curved stair from the mudroom is a bedroom and study where Mansfield taught her granddaughters to make cards.
One of her favorite memories was calling her granddaughter at college in Miami.
“I said, baby, we have our first snow it’s beautiful,” Mansfield said.
Crying and sick with freshman year blues, the girl said she wished she was there. Mansfield told her to hop in a plane. In shorts and a sweatshirt when she landed, Mansfield handed her a down jacket and a pair of Uggs.
“I have a picture of her twirling in my jacket and Ugg boots in shorts,” she said. “She was surrounded by love and fireplaces.”
Built like a barn, the guesthouse on the property has a kitchen, dinette and a split level living room with the fire pole from the original Essex fire station. Up a curved staircase, the master bedroom overlooks the property from the silo. The bathroom has a solid copper tub.
“I’m going to miss the seasons and I’m going to miss the completeness of living in that house because I always felt very happy and complete,” Mansfield said. “For me it was just a wonderful happy place to be. It was a sanctuary. I felt creative; I felt productive.”