Directly across from the village of Port Royal on the Rappahannock River, Belle Grove is typical of the many eighteenth-century wooden plantation houses that proliferated in the region. The structure, with a two-story clapboarded frame, was built by John Hipkins for his daughter Fannie, who had married William Bernard in 1789. The Sterns had constructed a similar house, with the wide elliptical arches on the interior and projecting entrance halls that are features of Belle Grove, in Caroline County. In the midnineteenth century Carolinus Turner purchased the house and added the wings and the two-story porticoes. On the river side is a twotiered Roman Ionic over Greek Doric portico, and on the land side is a Doric portico. James Madison, fourth president of the United States, was born in a house that once stood on the property.