Four Oaks Farm in Branchburg was listed and sold through Turpin’s Far Hills office in 2004.  Constructed during the Revolutionary War Era of the 1700s, Four Oaks Farm began as a simple clapboard farmhouse.  Today’s main dwelling has been transformed over several centuries in to an elegant country home styled in the neoclassic Greek Revival tradition.  The three-story home contains 15 rooms, seven fireplaces, four main bedrooms, three staff rooms, five full and two half baths.

An incredible New Jersey real estate acquisition, Four Oaks Farm contains over 400 acres of unspoiled woods and open pastureland take in vast countryside views.  Professionally landscaped grounds feature perennial and cutting gardens in addition to mature shade trees and an established apple orchard.  A brick-walled terraced, designed by landscape architect Nelva Weber, overlooks a babbling brook.  Bordered partially by the confluence of the Lamington and North Branch of the Raritan Rivers, there is over 3,000 feet of water frontage and a six-plus acre island in Bedminster Township. 

While this exceptional property stands alone as a grand country estate, its owners were equally compelling.

Born in 1912, Mary Morley Crapo was raised in Detroit, Michigan. She attended Vassar College and Columbia University. In 1939, she married Donald Hyde, a New York lawyer. The couple bought Samuel Johnson’s silver teapot in 1941 and threw a tea party in its honor. Over the next 25 years, they became avid collectors of Johnson’s belongings, including hundreds of his letters, several of his diaries and a collection of his poems.

Mary Hyde—as she was then known—purchased Four Oaks Farm in 1943. She added a library to the property, filling the house with the couples’ Samuel Johnson collection. After Donald Hyde’s death in 1966, his wife wrote several literary volumes and developed an Oscar Wilde collection that was second in size only to that of the University of California.

Mary Hyde married David Eccles, first Viscount Eccles in 1984, becoming Mary, Viscountess Eccles. Lady Eccles housed her collection at Four Oaks Farm, a place she readily granted access to researchers, writers and scholars from all over the world. She contributed important scholarly works on a variety of subjects and generously loaned her items from her collection to exhibitions.  Lady Eccles died at the age of 91 in 2003.