Meet Our Staff: Head Carpenter Fred Griffith Talks Building Oak Spring

Without the generations of expert craftsmen who have stacked stone, built beautiful structures, and maintained iconic historic buildings, we wouldn’t have an Oak Spring. Today, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation is fortunate to employ legacy carpenters, stone masons, painters, and others who have helped make the site what it is today. One of them is our Head Carpenter Fred Griffith, who has been working here since 1979: first for OSGF founder Bunny Mellon, and currently for the foundation.

Fred, who hails from Halfway, VA, first came to Oak Spring to help build the old wing of the Oak Spring Garden Library in the late 1970s. Although he had originally planned to pursue a career as a rhythm and blues musician, he decided to stick around Fauquier County to work at Oak Spring and raise his family - and we’re glad he did!

Since he first started at Oak Spring around forty years ago, Fred, fellow carpenter Al Reed, and the rest of the skilled facilities team have worked on numerous projects, ranging from building a gazebo for a visit from Prince Charles and Princess Diana, to renovating farm buildings for new uses while maintaining their original charm, to keeping iconic structures like the Main Residence safe and secure.

Currently, Fred and the team are working to renovate the Schoolhouse on the Rokeby side of the property. One of the site’s oldest buildings, it was erected prior to 1860 and survived the 1864 Burning Raid of the Civil War. According to Rokeby: A Landscape Biography, the building was thought to have served as a school and chapel before being being renovated in the 1930s for use as a farm office. Its next life will be as a communal dining space for Oak Spring residents and others, and the renovation of the old building has been challenging - but rewarding, said Fred - for the team.

Fred recently took time out of his busy schedule to chat about working on this project and others at Oak Spring. Scroll down to “meet” this wonderful OSGF staff member.

How did you first come to OSGF? 

FG: I wound up here back in the spring of 1979. The contractor, who was building the library down here, needed a carpenter, and at the time I was in between jobs - I used to work for my dad, who was a building contractor. I started working for Jackson, who was the contractor, with (carpenter) Alton Reed, (stone mason) Tommy Reed and a few others, and that's how it began. 

Fred hanging a new, handcrafted sign at the Biocultural Conservation Farm. Photo by Christine Harris.

I learned carpentry through my father and the men who worked with him. My father had started out back in the 1930s as a stone mason. He did stone work around here - my father, his father, and my grandfather on my mother's side, they were all stone masons, and built a lot these stone walls, which kept them in work during the Great Depression.

So I ended up here in ‘79, and then Mrs. Mellon hired us on in 1980. After the contractor pulled out she wanted people here to work on the farm, so she hired six of us who had been working on the Garden Library - Al Reed, Tommy Reed, Ron Evans, Bill Champ, Fred Wines, and myself. 

What is your day to day job like at the foundation?

Carpenters Fred and Al Reed working on the library roof. Photo by Elinor Crane.

FG: We're busy! We're basically rebuilding the whole place. For years, we used to do a lot of maintenance work here - in the later years, we weren't building anything new, we were basically just keeping everything together. Everything needs to be updated, because a lot of it was built in the 1950s and ‘60s. And of course, changing all these buildings - barns and farm buildings - into usable buildings for what the foundation is doing. 

What is the facilities team working on right now? 

Oak Spring’s Schoolhouse, which the facilities team is renovating for use as a dining space.

FG: The Schoolhouse is our biggest project right now, which we hope to have done this August. From there, we'll be doing a little bit of work on the Granary, and then we have to go back to the Main House. We put new windows in the Main House and the Guest House, but we still have more windows to do, and basic maintenance work. There's always something to fix around here, always! 

What is the most Challenging part of your job? 

FG: One thing with remodeling, which is mostly what we do, is that it can be real challenging - and sometimes frustrating, because you don't know what you're going to run into. It's not like a new piece, when you've got a plan and you pretty much know how it's going to go. 

When you're remodeling, you're tearing things out,  and you run into things you don't expect. At the Schoolhouse, for instance, we got into the basement and found out we had to tear out the whole floor, because it was rotting in spots. So, so you have to stand back and figure it out as you go along. 

Schoolhouse renovations underway from earlier in the spring. Photo by Elinor Crane.

Out of all of the projects we've done here over the years, we've had some that were a lot more challenging than others. I remember when I first came to work here at the Library, we used to have to make mock-ups for Mrs. Mellon. For the kitchen in the Library, we mocked the whole thing up out of cardboard, so that she could see it and adjust things. I’d never done that before at the time - I was in my early twenties then, and that was pretty crazy stuff for me, to be building kitchen cabinets out of cardboard! But that's what she wanted, and it worked out well, because she'd come in and say what she wanted us to change.  

Was Mrs. Mellon involved with building projects?

FG: Oh yeah, she was very involved. The thing with Mrs. Mellon, when we did things, she'd say, “Ok, I'll be back to tell you what to do” - that was it, if she didn't come back for two weeks, you waited until she got back to work on a project! You never rushed her; you were going on her timetable. 

She was the reason we got jobs here, and after Mr. Mellon died, she was the reason we kept our jobs, because she felt this was basically her family to a certain degree. She kept us all in a job, when she could have easily shut this farm down, and moved to Nantucket or some place to have an easier life. 

Plans for the pavilion that Fred, Alton Reed, and others built for the 1985 luncheon for Prince Charles and Princess Diana. The structure, which sat 18 guests, was placed outside the Main Residence living room, and was removed after the event. Image from the Oak Spring Garden Library archives.

Do you have any favorite projects that you’ve worked on over the years?  

FG: The Library for me was one of the most enjoyable projects, because we interacted a lot (with Mrs. Mellon) there. There were some other jobs at [the Spring Hill portion of the estate] that were interesting - we redid the log cabin that was originally supposed to be for Jackie Onassis to stay in.  

Another one of the challenging projects was the gazebo we built when Prince Charles and Lady Di came here (in 1985). We basically spent three months building this gazebo out of wood and plexiglass for one meal, and then it was taken down afterwards. 

Fred replacing a window in the Main Residence several years ago.

Of the more recent stuff we've been doing, putting the new windows in the house was pretty neat because we weren't sure what we were going to run into when we were tearing those old windows out. The Schoolhouse too - I know Al and them have been having fun with that, and they've been really working hard on it.

When it's all done, it'll put a smile on everybody's face. It's nice to see a finished project; it makes you proud to say we were a part of that. And it's good to see the use of it afterwards, to see that everyone has a chance to use it and be a part of it. 

When you’re not Working, what do you like to do in your free time?

FG: I do collect antiques - vintage toys - and I do antique shows. My wife and I used to have a shop in Marshall, but we closed it when the recession hit (in 2008).

So now I basically do antique shows in the Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina area - that's what I do on the weekends and what I use my vacation time for. I enjoy going to old farm auctions, and stuff like that. I love buying, which is the fun part - the selling is just something I kind of have to do because I can't keep everything! But finding stuff, and going through stuff, that's fun, because it's a piece of history.

Do you have any advice for aspiring carpenters?

FG: Something that this trade really needs is young people. Carpentry's changed, especially new carpentry, because most things are pre-made, and you just kind of put the puzzle together. But remodeling, it's its own beast. It's very challenging when you don't know what you're going to run into and you have to figure it out as you're going along.  

But this trade needs people, and I'd recommend a young carpenter go to a union school, because the union trade schools are very good, and you'll be taught the right way of doing it. Especially where you can get with people who have some knowledge, because a lot of the tricks of the trade you learn from other people or just from doing the job day after day. There are always things to learn, even at my age!

Is there anything else you’d like to say about your work here at Oak Spring?

FG: One thing is that, since I've been here, it's been like a big family - Al and Tommy, they're like brothers to me. I've been working with them for 42 years. They're a part of my family, and it's been good - it wasn't my plan to be here all this time, but it couldn't have worked out better.  

Banner image: Fred making a bannister for the Schoolhouse