A Look Inside the Ever-Evolving Edloe Glades
Photos by Ashlee Glen
Approaching Edloe Glades is a transportation back in time.
Your feet pad softly along the grass while Antebellum-era boxwoods on either side guide your journey—their scent bringing to mind long, leisurely summers in a pre-war South. As the intricate gardens usher you along, you get your first glimpse of the 19th-century Federal-style home. Lace-like cast iron railings direct your gaze upward to the second-story entrance, an imperial staircase leading the way.
The entrance is where the historical accuracy ends, however. A keen eye will notice variations in the brick along the front facade, the first indication that the historic manor home has had a journey of its own.
“The house has burned twice,” explained Chloe Cubbage, owner of Edloe Glades along with her husband Doug. “It was fully rebuilt by the Earley family in the 1950s.”
The center footprint is original to the home; it’s one room deep and faces directly north and south so the winds cool the home in the summer and the sun warms in the winter. But after enduring the two fires, little remains beyond that of the original home. Expansions and extensions were made when the Earleys took ownership, including additional wings off the east and west side of the home, rounding out the square footage of the four-bedroom, five-bath home to just over 4,500 square feet.
Walking through the front door, sweeping 11-foot ceilings, built-up crown molding, and lavish floral wallpaper greet you to your left. The home has an impressive eight fireplaces, six of which—including the fireplace in the front room—feature ornamental mantles of imported marble from New Orleans. A gilded mirror is anchored atop the mantle.
“We literally wrote the mirror into the contract,” Chloe said, describing the process of buying the 1826 home back in 2020. “Lillian Earley owned this home before us and she was an eclectic collector. She brought so many beautiful pieces from the French Quarter [in New Orleans].”
In the front living room alone, evidence of Earley’s varying tastes can be found in every corner, from the cornice window surrounds that she sourced from a French chateau to the hand-painted grand piano, another piece Chloe ensured stayed with the home.
“The Earley family owned a cotton farm in Arizona, which is where they would spend their winters,” Chloe said. “Lillian would arrive here in March for Easter and leave right after Thanksgiving.”
There are marked similarities between the Earleys and the Cubbages, almost as if Edloe Glades itself has a type. Just as the Earleys only spent half of their year at Edloe Glades, the Cubbages also split their time.
“This was a pandemic purchase,” Chloe explained, as they purchased the home in 2020 just as the COVID pandemic took hold. “At the time, Doug worked for the Virginia DOT. We were living in Richmond and, once the pandemic hit, they transitioned their office to partially remote. Doug had lived in Lynchburg once upon a time and was always traveling outside of the city to be in the mountains so we thought, ‘why not find a house there?’ Doug wanted outdoor space, I wanted a space for a horse. When we found this place, we knew it was the one.”
Chloe resides at Edloe Glades almost full time, with Doug still shuffling in between the Amherst county home and their Richmond home. Eventually, the two will remain at Edloe Glades full time.
Chloe isn’t your typical Southern estate owner, just as Lillian Earley didn’t seem to be. A North Carolina native, Chloe’s days are full, spiriting from one task to another, sleeves rolled up and farm shoes on. An avid thrifter and collector, Chloe has furnished the entire home from Facebook Marketplace and thrift store finds—the entire decor budget totalling just $10,000. When she’s not decorating her home or the home of clients via her interior design business, Hive Interiors, she’s tending to the myriad animals they have on the property. Guineas, goats, ducks, chickens, pigs, rabbits, birds, cows, horses, and one sassy llama pepper the 16-acre property. The Cubbages started taking in animals in 2021 when neighboring farms and animal owners had animals they could no longer care for or were too old to be productive on a working farm. In 2022, Liberty Meadows Farm Sanctuary officially became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. They work with animal controls around Virginia and take in owner-surrenders.
Chloe’s interior design aesthetic reflects her personality—passionately curious, creative, and whimsical with a down-to-earth air that invites anyone and everyone (four-legged friends included) in.
“I knew I wanted to play in each space and I actively tried to make things look different than what you would see in a beige catalog page,” she said. “This house has given me so much flexibility to play. The downstairs and the library are much more my natural aesthetic—plaid, velvet, deep greens, rich wood.”
The house is still in flux, the Cubbages taking their time to meticulously work their way through renovations and interior upgrades. Chloe attributes the house’s own impermanence—its two fires and subsequent renovations—to the flexibility she’s had in designing a space she and Doug will love for years to come.
“We don’t want to add chic modern finishes,” said Chloe. “Part of that means living in flux with terrible carpet or not having the budget to finish the stairs just yet.”
The work the Cubbages are doing—creating an animal sanctuary, designing a space that welcomes everyone, and forging their own aesthetic path in a pre-war plantation home—is a reminder that change can be beautiful and that writing a new story within a well-loved and -lived in space is perhaps what the future of a historic home is all about.
