At noon on Sunday, December 13, the gates at 4305 Sulgrave Road open, and the activities start at 12:15. Over the next five hours, the gardens and courtyards of a Tudor manor house fill with people in costume. You'll meet residents of Agecroft Hall in the 1600s, Charles Dickens and his cast of characters, and soldiers training for World War II. Father Christmas is on the schedule. Admission is free and you don't need to register.
Yuletides at Agecroft happens every December. This year it falls in a milestone year, because Agecroft counts 2026 as its 100th year in Virginia. The other English manor house on the same road is Virginia House at 4301 Sulgrave. It is in the middle of its own centennial and has spent it on repairs. That leaves Agecroft as Sulgrave Road's open house this December.
The Centennial's Biggest Free Day
Most of Agecroft's Yuletides open house happens outdoors, plus one walk through the house. The holiday scenes come from three eras: 17th-century England, 19th-century London and 20th-century Richmond. After the gardens, a self-guided tour takes you through the museum, decorated in styles from the 1600s through the 1940s. There are family crafts, simmering cider, music, a Sweets Shop and a Gift Shop.
The vendors listed for 2026 are Eddie Rose Coffee, Shelby Lynn's Artisan Bakehouse, Cake Between Friends and Face Painting with KJ Hawk. Agecroft says more may be added. If you went last year, the food lineup has changed a little. Cake Between Friends is new. Petty's Pastries and Rest Pizza, both on the 2025 list, aren't listed this time. Eddie Rose Coffee, Shelby Lynn's and the face painting are back.
Here are the details for the day:
- When: Sunday, December 13, 2026. Gates open at noon and activities run 12:15 to 5 p.m.
- Where: Agecroft Hall & Gardens, 4305 Sulgrave Road
- Cost: Free, no registration required
We covered the fall side of this anniversary in our look at how Windsor Farms and Agecroft Hall both turned 100 this year. December brings the anniversary through Agecroft's gates for free.
More Evenings and Mornings Before Christmas
Yuletides is the free day, but Agecroft runs programs on the property through most of December. These are small and ticketed, and each has its own theme:
- Kids' Winter Craft Night, Friday, December 4, 6 to 8 p.m. It's a drop-off evening for ages 6 to 11, and tickets are $15 per child.
- Bellycheer! Feasting in England 1580–1640, Saturday, December 5, 10 to 11:30 a.m. This guided tour covers holiday food history. Tickets are $12 per person, and museum members get 20% off.
- Bellycheer! again on Wednesday, December 16, 10 to 11:30 a.m., with the same price and discount.
- Bellycheer! in an evening slot on Tuesday, December 22, 6 to 7:30 p.m., at $12.
- Mummers & Merriment, Wednesday, December 23, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. This is a tour of Tudor Christmas traditions that ends with a play the audience joins. Tickets are $12 per person, with 20% off for members.
Agecroft's events calendar lists something on nine different December dates, from December 4 through December 23, and the open house sits in the middle of that run. If you need a gift for someone who's hard to shop for, the December 22 Bellycheer! tour falls on a weeknight evening. That makes it one of the few options here that fits after work.
Next Door, a Manor House Rebuilt One Repair at a Time
Walk a few steps down Sulgrave Road and you reach Virginia House, which is owned and operated by the Virginia Historical Society. It was an English country manor that was relocated to Richmond in 1925. Ambassador Alexander Weddell and his wife, Virginia, lived there from 1928 to 1948. It doesn't run like a museum with daily hours. The public can get in only on select event dates, and a regular Virginia Museum of History & Culture admission ticket doesn't include it.
Last December's Virginia House Holiday Open House was set for Sunday, December 14, 2025. It was canceled. The museum gave the reason as "unforeseen challenges related to exciting preservation work at Virginia House."
Much of that work is now done. The museum calls 2025 through 2029 the Virginia House Centennial Period. It is paying for a series of preservation projects through donor gifts. According to the museum, restoration of the Virginia House loggia was finished in summer 2025. The replacement roof was then celebrated at a members' Garden Party on May 14, 2026, which included a short ceremony to dedicate it. In 2023, the museum's magazine had pointed to water-damaged ceiling beams in the loggia as needing replacement after decades of weather and use.
More work is listed on the Virginia House Fund page. The plans include restoring second-floor interior plaster, adding a driveway and ramps for accessibility, upgrading security, and producing touring resources and a book.
From the street, the two houses look like a matched pair: English manors brought across the Atlantic in the same few years, standing side by side. They have handled their centennials differently. Agecroft has filled its calendar with events. Virginia House has spent its centennial period on the roof over its head.
The Rest of the Corridor Fills the First Week of December
Most of December's free events along this stretch fall in a single week, and they're within a short drive of Sulgrave Road. Here they are in order:
- Monday, November 30, 7:30 p.m. The University of Richmond Chamber Ensembles perform in Camp Concert Hall. Student instrumentalists, vocalists and pianists play. The concert is part of the Department of Music's free series, and you need to register.
- Wednesday, December 2, 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. The Farmers Market @ St. Stephen's hosts the Christkindlmarket at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church. It has more than 20 local artisans, food trucks, festive drinks and carolers, both indoors and out. Admission and parking are free, and you don't need to register. The church is at 6000 Grove Avenue.
- Wednesday, December 2, 7:30 p.m. On the same night, the University Symphony Orchestra plays Camp Concert Hall. The program features violist Gabriella Meisner, who won the annual Concerto Competition, and Lamentation for string orchestra by Artist-in-Residence composer Keane Southard. It is free with registration.
- Sunday, December 6, 5 and 8 p.m. The 53rd Annual Candlelight Festival of Lessons and Carols takes place in Cannon Memorial Chapel.
- Sunday, December 13, noon to 5 p.m. Yuletides at Agecroft.
The December 2 market ends at 7:30 and the symphony starts at 7:30, so you can't do both. Pick one, or arrive at the market right at 4:30.
Lessons and Carols is the oldest event on this list. The University of Richmond's 2026–27 Department of Music season describes it this way:
"Schola Cantorum and guests lead the 53rd annual Festival of Lessons and Carols in the tradition of King's College at Cambridge... Tickets are not required, and all will be welcomed as space allows."
Because there are no tickets, seats go to whoever arrives first. That's the main reason the service runs twice. The 5 p.m. service ends early enough for dinner afterward. The 8 p.m. service is the darker, candlelit one. The Department of Music organizes it together with the university's Office of the Chaplaincy, so it isn't part of the ticketed performing arts season we wrote about in our piece on Modlin Center's 30th year.
So between November 30 and December 13, you have three free concerts or services, an artisan market and a manor house open house within a couple of miles. Agecroft's Christmas Open House is the last of them.
A Gift Stop on Huguenot Road
If the Christkindlmarket doesn't finish your list, there's a newer option at River Road II Shopping Center. Flourish Spaces is an interior design studio and shop owned by Stevie McFadden. In October it moved a few doors down within the center to a new end-cap space at 5029 Huguenot Road, next to Chico's. Richmond BizSense reported that the 2,700-square-foot shop is smaller than the old one. McFadden designed it around how her customers like to shop, and the design studio now gets better light.
The shop sells furniture, paint, wallpaper and lighting. Its brands include Little Greene Paint, Wesley Hall, Taylor King, Four Hands, Visual Comfort and Hudson Valley. Gild and Ash and Stella's are neighbors in the same center. You could make an afternoon of it: lunch at Stella's, a lamp from Flourish, and Agecroft's Sweets Shop on the 13th for the people who'd rather have cake.
For more on the streets around Sulgrave Road, Grove Avenue and the university, see our River Road neighborhood guide.
If you own an older home near Sulgrave Road and the Virginia House roof and loggia work has you thinking about your own slate, beams or plaster, Gary Martin has built more than 300 homes and is happy to walk the house with you before the holiday guests arrive. Let's talk about your Richmond home.
