Comments on: Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008: Yardley, Abandoned

By: Marianne

Marianne — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:43:25 +0000

Wasnt one of the long time owners a gym teacher at PHS? Didn’t she use to tell stories of it being haunted?

By: Gerre

Gerre — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 05:26:44 +0000

Bucks County Courthouse in Doylestown is a good place to start to check land records. Also, in Philadelphia there are state records in their archives. I do genealogy and also use Ancestry.com for census records, land records and newspaper articles. Also, the Yardley News Archives might be hellpful. I lived in yardley from the 70s – 90 and one of my son’s still lives there. We call that home for us as our children were raised there and we were active in the community. A wonderful place. I always loved that house, too. Dreamed of fixing it up to it’s colonial splendor. Good luck with your research. If you would like any further help from me I’d be glad to do some searching for you. I do get to Yardley about every 2-3 months.

By: JD

JD — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:38:03 +0000

… I take that back about a settlers cabin … after checking out those neat photos again and looking at the property using Bings’ birdseye, there are so many additions to the house, its almost mind boggling. It would be hard to tell what sections were built first or even in what order without much research. The middle section with the “front door” seems to have different sized stone and it has a large chimney. It looks like maybe 7 different additions to the home as well as two smaller homes/out buildings and the ruins of a very large barn that’s closer to Afton and very visible in the winter. In addition to the property being a farm and quarry, if you go to Penn Pilots website, the aerial view from 1938 shows a very large evergreen plantation on the north side of the property. Many of these now overgrown trees can be seen today between the houses from Lafeyette over to University Drive. Also, speaking of ghost stories, as a teen, in the late ’80′s, I had a friend who lived on University Drive, and we would sneak onto the property with girls, entering from Yale, looking to get spooked. A couple of years later, we would shoot paintball on the eastern side and even sneak a few beers. There were people renting the property then, but nobody seemed to care if we used the fields … The house was in much better shape then. In any event, hopefully the “Developer will do the right thing” and restore the home to a fine example of the past. Fingers crossed.

By: JD

JD — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 02:43:14 +0000

As a historical note:
The land at Scammels corner was purchased from the original owner, Edward Nickleson sometime around the turn of the 19th century. Both the 1876 and 1891 cadastral maps of Lower Makefield both show E. Nickleson as the landholder. Nickleson was a very intriguing man and a very prominent member of the Yardley(ville) community who lived to a very old age. In addition to a large farm, Nickleson opened the Brownstone quarry on the property in 1816. This is the quarry located in the back of the Sandy Run Development. The quarry was noted throughout the land as one of the finest in producing structural grade brownstone. I don’t know about foundations on the property from the late 16oo’s, but all of the existing houses on the property were apparently erected with brownstone from the quarry, placing them from early to mid 1800′s. The building style certainly seems in line with that. In viewing all of the buildings and while there are several apparent additions, there is no evidence of a “settlers cabin” in the construction anywhere, which could back a claim of early building on the property in the main or guest houses. Battles History of Bucks Co (A must read) in its Bio of Nickleson, states his father, a tailor in town, bought some portion of the land and erected a home. The 1876 map shows out structures down near the bottom portion of the property near the present location of the shopping strip. Maybe these were the original homestead, being closer to town. Who knows. In any event, the place must have been quite grand in its day …. just another shame on our community, along with Edgewood village, to allow historic buildings to crumble to nothing, almost always because of some bureaucracy.

By: Genevieve Rosso

Genevieve Rosso — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:42:50 +0000

Mike:

I just got done watching our Yardley council members talk about the settlement of this 17 year lawsuit. The son of Mr. Scammells was there to thank the council members for approving the construction of 16 homes and that when he sold the property he never envisionned this to happen. He was visibly saddened by the actions of the developper to let it go to ruins. He talked about his childhood briefly, the days of great entertainment and some 50 weddings that took place there. When he was done, he walked to the plans, displayed on an easel board, and gazed at the drawings. The council kept referring to the “Quaker Group Developer” (maybe they bought out the last developer?) who during the last meetings, worked with the neighbors to ensure there would be no water run-off and that a tree lined buffer would give them privacy between the new homes and the older ones. The developer is also working with the Historical Society to conserve the main house and I think they mentionned an outhouse also. They will also build a sidewalk that will wrap around Newtown-Yardley road and Yardley-Langhorne rd but it will not go past University Drive to tie into Afton rd. The public asked the township to work with the borough to find ways to connect the two sidewalks. How interesting…my husband and I drove by slowly last week-end peeking through the trees admiring the stone house. Thank you for the close up pictures!

By: Wynter Scammell

Wynter Scammell — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 13:05:47 +0000

I happened upon this sight when I typed in Scammell’s Corner looking for my Dad’s new surf shop that he opened in NC and i was intrigued to hear about this “Scammell’s Corner” and see this house that must have been something spectacular at one time. I am a Scammell by birth, not by marriage, and I know very little of our family history and have been wanting to do my own research and just find out everything I can about the Scammell family and history. I am familiar with the China and have many pieces myself, including a whole dining set, a plate commemorating the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Trenton, and two small pieces that were used by the US Navy. My father is a descendent in some way and I haven’t talked to him much about the family history but I would like to know where I can get a head start in this area. Is there a town historian or an office I can go to to start searching? Any information would be greatly appreciated. I am my father’s only daughter and I often joke that I won’t give up the Scammell name when I marry and after my research I might definately never be able to give it up.

By: Tj

Tj — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:37:05 +0000

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By: Tj

Tj — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 22:57:29 +0000

I went by the house with my friends and a hunter lives in the woods by it. I heard a radio on by his house then I heard a snapping noise by the mansion.
There was a shack built on to the side of the house that had writing in it that said turn off mortor when done . It was creepy
So watch out! I think there might be gohsts in the basement

By: Rick Moffat

Rick Moffat — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:47:14 +0000

I grew up in Yardley and back in the 1960′s, I can remember the sight of Mrs. Scammel driving through town in her little Mercedes sports car, dressed in pearls and little cashmere sweater . She was something to see. The house and grounds are/were a superb example of Pennsylavania Quaker design. Just the banister on the main staircase was heart-stoppingly lovely. I used to “check in” on the property during the 80′s/90′s on my visits home to my parents, but now that I have no family left in Yardley I have not been by to check on the house on about 10 years. As another poster here said…I had always thought to myself; “If money were no object…” but the place is just out of hand by now, I’d suspect.

Best,

Rick Moffat

By: diane

diane — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:16:42 +0000

Hi- one more note- my husband had some more info about the house being haunted– a young son drowned in the quarry on the property. Hope this helps.