87 Silverbrook Rd, Sandisfield, MA 01255

Barnhill Farm. For 25 years the home of author Simon Winchester, who wrote 8 books in its c.1812 granary studio in the orchard. A c.1760 & 1840 farmhouse, fully restored with its original floorboards, doors & hardware saved, then a portion of the home thoughtfully opened up and beautifully decorated throughout in 2006. Aga kitchen, vaulted living room with a dual-sided fireplace, screened porch facing the southern sky. Library, morning room, keeping room. 4 bedrooms and 3 baths. 60 acres with 3/4 mile of frontage on a quiet town road, bordering protected forest. Stone walls, orchard, meadow, pine grove, frog pond, a woodland stream and night skies dark enough for Saturn. 2 1/2 hours to the city, 2 centuries from everything else. Read the whole story. Come see what it feels like. Barnhill Farm .. c.1760, 1840 & 2006 | 4 bedrooms, 3 baths | 60 acres | 3/4 mile road frontage | $2,250,000 .. . This has been a happy place, and we have considered our years here not so much as owners, but more as curators - our task, an eminently pleasing one, has been to look after a venerable old property, making nips and tucks and small improvements here and there so that when the moment comes to hand it on ourselves, as we do now, we leave it in better shape than when we first arrived and put down roots. I hope and trust that whoever takes it on in our place will cherish this precious piece of American history, will love it and care for it and enjoy it, and then in due time hand it over as well, keeping the ever-lengthening thread of history unbroken for decades and maybe centuries to come. -Simon Winchester, Author . On a January morning the Aga has been burning through the night, and the kitchen is warm before you reach it. The sun rises directly into this end of the house and tracks the length of the room through the day. Across the orchard stands the studio, a c.1812 granary, close enough to walk to with your coffee and far enough that nothing domestic follows you in. Eight books were written there. . In May the apple trees are in blossom and the air off the meadow is extraordinary. Summer evenings end at the fire pit by the frog pond when the peepers start at dusk. October brings cider pressing in the orchard. On clear winter nights the telescope on the porch finds Saturn in a sky so dark that, as Winchester puts it, the stars look like diamonds on velvet. . There is an older thread as well. Edmund Hamilton Sears grew up just down the road under the same sky, and in 1849 he wrote "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear." Five years later his brother Joshua bought this farm. The history is real and well documented. It is not the reason to buy the place. The reason is the life it makes possible. . . Barnhill sits on 60 acres with a staggering three quarters of a mile of frontage on Silverbrook Road, a very quiet, town-maintained road in Sandisfield. Stone walls line the drive, and more run through the woods beyond. The property borders protected forest land. Sandisfield is two and a half hours from New York City, and the distance is the point. James Ayrault built the first house here around 1760, on land his family acquired in Sandisfield's first land division. In 1840 the Greek Revival main house was added, and the original structure became its summer kitchen ell. In 1985 old-house specialist Peter Strattner of New Marlborough restored the whole of it: original windows, doors and hardware set aside and reused, missing plaster and molding recreated by hand, the foundation refitted with quarried stone. Not a house made to look old. An old house brought back to itself. . The Winchesters bought the farm in 2001 and carried the work forward. In 2006 they opened up the southern end of the 1760 wing, vaulting the ceiling to expose its timber beams, rebuilding the kitchen with hand-crafted cabinetry around the Aga, adding a mudroom, and building a dual-sided wood-burning fireplace between a new living room and a new screened porch. The library, which had no shelves, was fitted floor to ceiling. . . The front door of the 1840 house opens into a proper entry hall. To the right is the Morning Room, with a fireplace and Farrow & Ball Pink Ground on the walls, formal enough for dinner and comfortable enough for a second cup of coffee. Beyond it, the library: dark aubergine walls, a wood stove, books to the ceiling. Close the door and the rest of the house goes quiet. At the end of the hall is a small room with a single bed, honestly best as a study, which is how it has been used. . Across the hall is the keeping room, the informal heart of the 1760 house, anchored by a large fireplace with its original crane, now fitted with a wood stove. Winter breakfasts happen here in the early light, and this is where everyone ends up after dinner. To the north are a full bath with laundry, a pantry, and the larger of the two ground floor bedrooms. . . The entry hall stairs lead to the primary bedroom, a guest room and a full bath, all looking out over the orchard. Above the 1760 portion, a finished attic serves as a dressing room. A narrow stair continues to a finished third floor, a long insulated room with space for yoga, meditation or play. . A small covered porch joins the two houses on the keeping room side, and the mudroom, with radiant floor heat, brings you in from the driveway. Beyond it is the kitchen: the Aga set against the old chimney, cabinetry built to suit the house rather than imposed on it, and a peninsula of warm wood reaching into the vaulted living room. Timber beams span the ceiling above wide plank floors. At the far end the fireplace opens to both the living room and the porch. . . This room is used in every season. In winter glazed panels close it in and the southern sun warms it like a greenhouse; open the doors and that warmth flows into the house. Around Memorial Day some panels come out, screens go in, and the room opens to the meadow. Breakfast here, tea in the afternoon, wine in the evening, a long table for dinner. The porch faces the southern sky along the path the planets travel, and no meaningful light pollution reaches the farm. The nearest faint glow on the horizon is Winsted, Connecticut, and some nights it is not visible at all. . . The granary stands at the edge of the orchard, reached by a path through the perennial gardens. Winchester found the c.1812 frame in serious disrepair near Cambridge, New York, had it dismantled and restored in Vermont, and re-erected it here. The glorious timber frame is fully exposed. The main level is currently a working library with shelves from floor to peak, with a sleeping loft above and a full bath at one end. The large desk, made for the room, stays. The books and art go with the Winchesters. The building remains, equally suited to writing, guests, work or simply doing nothing at all. . . The main barn is a weathered timber frame. Setsuko Winchester, a former journalist turned artist, added a mezzanine with its own staircase, modeled on a barn she admired on the road to Granville, and hung a chandelier from their Chelsea loft. Below, what began as two horse stalls are now her art studio and his wood shop. Owned solar panels on the barn's south-facing roof cover the property's electricity, and every window in the main house has been replaced with insulated units made to match the originals. The red equipment barn near the road has an EV charging outlet and, on its north wall, an old Dorset brewery plaque declaring its beer the best in the west. Winchester grew up in Dorset and thought the claim applied here too. . . The grounds move from one outdoor room to the next. Near the house, a stone patio with a fire pit and table. Beyond it, Goosey's Garden, a former chicken run composted into the most productive raised beds on the place, shaded by a young willow. East of the barn, the frog pond and a second fire pit, where evenings tend to drift. The orchard yields cider apples and a surprising crop of peaches, crab apples along the front of the house draw the birds, and wild blueberries line the edge of the woods. Nothing has been sprayed or chemically fertilized. The gardens run on the farm's own compost. . Past the meadow is a pine grove carpeted in needles, with Adirondack chairs and a hammock that have lived there for years. It stays cool even in July. Beyond it a vernal stream runs through the woods, heard before it is seen. Fifty feet in, the house disappears and the canopy closes. . What This Is: A historic farmhouse restored with real skill and lived in with intelligence, on land that has been cared for rather than styled. The studio is intact, the orchard blooms every May, and the night sky is as dark as it was when Sears knew it. . Come and see what that feels like. . . . Of all the many places I have lived in my eight decades thus far run, none has been more sweetly rewarding than this reborn old farm tucked away on its long dirt road in deepest Berkshire County, Massachusetts. I first saw it on a polar morning a quarter of a century ago, the trees all bowed under the weight of accumulated ice, the forest cracking as branches broke away. A few summers later my wife, sitting beneath an apple tree playing softly on her ukulele, wondered if I had imagined such a scene, on that bitter winter's day. Indeed yes, I replied: this had been just what I had dreamed of, back when I was based in Hong Kong: if ever I came to live in America, this was the paradise for which I hoped. -Simon Winchester, Author . . . . DISCLOSURES New septic system installed fall 2025. Solar panels are owned. A portion of the property is enrolled in Massachusetts Chapter 61 (forest land); buyer to review the forest management plan and classification obligations, including the Town's right of first refusal on any change of use. Property is subject to recorded rights of way and an access easement. Square footage does include the finished c.1812 granary which is multi-functional living and work space.