Leigh Farm - A Rare and Precious Place

By Becky Bumgardner

In June, 1995, TLC took title to a two-acre wedge of dense forest, flourishing poison ivy, mud and two small houses near the intersection of I-40 and Highway 54. And why did TLC buy a tract like this one? Because it is a key piece in the 86-acre Leigh Farm site of a future historic and environmental park for Durham. TLC's purchase of this tract helped make the larger project possible.

Leigh Farm is a "working" landscape—the result of human activities interacting with natural processes. The house that Stanford Leigh built for his bride, Nancy Ann Carlton, in 1834 is charming and unpretentious. The outbuildings are modest: two log cabins once occupied by slave familes, a smoke house, corn crib, carriage house, well house, and tiny dairy. One log cabin, built in the 1850s, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.