Nydrie farm bred 1947 Kentucky Derby winner Jet Pilot.
PHOTO COURTESY REY BARRY

If you live in Esmont, you have a new neighbor. Make that neeeeiigggh-bor. After three generations in the Van Clief family and almost three years on the market, historic horse farm Nydrie Stud sold June 18 for $4.8 million to Nydrie Farm LLC, owned by Eric Shobe.

Breeding place of 1947 Kentucky Derby winner Jet Pilot and Natalma, dam of prolific sire Northern Dancer, the 575-acre Albemarle landmark was home to high-dollar horses until five years ago.

“It’s been very quiet at the farm since then,” says D. G. Van Clief Jr., who adds that the sale was a part of his family’s efforts to divvy up family assets.

The Van Clief family will keep several remaining farms– which total approximately 2,400 acres– surrounding Nydrie, including Old Woodville, the house where the four Van Clief brothers grew up.

Van Clief says he has fond memories of his childhood in Esmont. “Summers were spent working with the horses,” he says.

Van Clief is the only brother still involved in the horse industry, and he recently served as Breeders’ Cup president and chairman of Fasig-Tipton, a thoroughbred auction company.

Van Clief’s grandparents bought the Nydrie property from Douglas Forsythe in 1928, and his father, Daniel G. VanClief, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, took over the farm in 1945.

Accountant Ted Bidwell worked at Nydrie for 43 years and remembers the busy 1970s and 1980s, when consignments of 15-20 yearlings would head to Saratoga Springs from the farm each year.

Even though the family operation slowed and passed through several generations, “The culture and tradition held out all those years,” says Bidwell, 72.

Located on the original Coles estate, where Thomas Jefferson’s family sought refuge during General Sir Banastre Tarlton’s raid on Monticello, the center of the estate is an ivy-covered brick barn. Once featured in Town and Country magazine, the slate-roofed barn was built in the late 1800s and added to in the 1930s. Other features of the farm include a pond and a brick bull ring.

One thing the new owners won’t be able to enjoy: the original Nydrie house (shown below, circa 1930’s)– “that old pile of bricks built in 1891″ as Van Clief’s father called it in a 1978 news article. The 64-room mansion, believed to have been designed by Richmond architect David Wiley Anderson, was built to emulate a Scottish castle. The stunning gothic house deteriorated after the Van Cliefs stopped maintaining it due to high costs, and the family sold the house to Lewis Ramsey, a Buckingham contractor who had experience dismantling historic houses. After the house was razed in 1978, most of its parts were sold.

The farm stayed in the Van Clief family until the June sale. Shobe declined to comment on his plans for the land.

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