764 East Hill Rd, New Marlborough, MA 01230

East Hill Farm offers 227 acres of protected quiet, anchored by the elegant 1798 Thomas Shepard House. A private hilltop world.
Main house: Georgian-Federal; 5 BR, 5.5 BA, ~5,000 SF; 5 fireplaces; unusually high ceilings, wide-board floors, antique glass, rooms that hold the light, views that connect. Graceful, welcoming.
A complete estate that also can be a working-farm or equine property: barns + outbuildings, pastures, private trails + roads, 4+ acre pond, gardens + orchard, pool, pool house, greenhouse, tennis.
A vast former Arabian horse barn, now guest compound, or for you to reimagine. Preserved with rigor, lived in with joy, and rooted in the land and history that defines the Berkshires. Read the whole story. Read the whole story - Click! WHERE THE WORLD FALLS AWAY
227 acres. 227 years. One extraordinary hilltop farm.

Drive up East Hill Road through Southfield village, past the store, climbing toward the top of Woodruff Mountain. The dirt road is well-maintained and lightly traveled. Sugar maples line your approach - massive, ancient trees that have watched over this land since before the house was built. Behind them, set back from the road, stands the kind of barn that makes photographers stop their cars. Three-and-a-half stories of hand-hewn timber, painted proper New England red, moved here piece by piece from Amherst, Massachusetts, because the sellers understood that a farm needs a real barn. Not a replica. The real thing.

The house stops your heart
Federal period, 1798, when John Adams was president. This wasn't just another farmhouse. When Thomas Shepard commissioned John Collar to build this, he was making a statement. 8 rooms. 5 fireplaces. Ceilings higher than any farmer needed. Those distinctive 12-over-12 windows with hand-blown glass that turns the morning light liquid. A facade with sidelight windows and dentil cornice that announced to every traveler: here lives a person of substance.

Walk through that front door and the wide center hall opens before you. Original wide-plank floors - King's boards, they called them, because timber this wide was supposed to be reserved for the Royal Navy's masts. Twin parlors flank the entrance, flooded with southern light. To your left, the original keeping room, now the dining room, where that massive cooking fireplace with its beehive oven still works perfectly after 227 years. The draft in these fireplaces is extraordinary.

The woodwork throughout is original or crafted by hand precisely to match. Chair rails, wainscoting, built-in china cabinets with their original hardware. Those small cupboards tucked around the chimneys - John Collar's signature touch.

Five Families in 227 Years
Jesse Hartwell married Thomas Shepard's niece and turned the house into a meeting place for progressive thinkers, and through the 19th century, the Hartwell family made this their home. Then came the Arabian horse breeders in the 1930s who added the newer rear ell and built what's now the guest house. The current sellers bought the house and five acres in 1969, then spent the next five decades not just restoring but thoughtfully expanding it. You'll be only the fifth family to call East Hill Farm home - and despite its National Register status, free to shape its future as you see fit.
That newer section? Radiant heat underfoot, a proper mudroom with laundry, a family room or perfect home office with its own kitchen, and an elevator up to a sun-filled library with built-in shelves and an ensuite bedroom and bath. A luminous sunroom framing year-round sunsets, with sweeping views across the formal gardens, horse pastures, and the shimmering pond below.

Upstairs in the original part of the house, an additional four bedrooms, each with its own character. The canopy bedroom with its blue and white toile - that's not staging, that's how the family lives. Wide hallways, deep closets, and in that large upstairs hall above the front door, a perfect spot to sit and read while gazing out the neoclassical window over your barn, fields and forest, mountains in the distance. 5 full and 1 half baths in all - some original 1930s with their good bones, others from the 1980s restoration. The kitchen? Also 1980s, completely functional with good counter space, and a working wood-fired stove alongside modern appliances. Morning light streams in from the east, and sunset views are to the west, opening onto fieldstone patios on either side.

Everything works: Oil heat from a Viessman German boiler, cedar shake roof (much replaced in 2021), private well water so good they've bottled it up for guests, backup generator, fiber internet. The bones are so good and the mechanicals so solid that you can move in tomorrow or update to your taste - the house won't fight you either way.

227 Acres: A Complete World
East Hill Farm is more than the sum of its parts. From the original five-acre homestead, the current owners passionately reunited land to create the breathtaking 227-acre estate it is today. 154 acres stretching across the north side of East Hill Road, and 73 tranquil acres to the south. To the north a substantial portion of the property borders Sandisfield State Forest and thousand of acres of protected land. To the south you have a section along Hotchkiss Road that is part of the New Marlboro Land Trust. Each acre is part of a dream fulfilled, a landscape that invites endless exploration and inspiration.

Walk west from the kitchen patio between the formal gardens. Brick paths wind through perennial beds the mother sketched out: heritage roses, peonies, iris. A long row of prolific blueberry bushes. In the vegetable garden, established asparagus and rhubarb come back stronger every year. Passing that perfect garden shed with its slate roof, as mist rises off the pond, becomes part of your morning coffee stroll.

The pond. About four acres, brook-fed, crystal clear. The family created it, and for decades it's been their private swimming hole, sailing spot, fishing paradise. Circle the pond and you'll find the big fishing rock on the west side, the perfect swimming spot on the east.

Or head into the forest. Miles of trails, including a loop road that connects to Sandisfield State Forest. In spring, Lee Brook, the largest of several on the farm, roars with snowmelt. Up where the brook crosses the trail, it forms a waterfall after a hard rain. These are the headwaters of the Whiting River, and you own it.

This isn't just acreage - it's a complete ecosystem. Meadows, forests, water, gardens, pastures, each flowing naturally into the next.

Built for Whatever You Dream
That magnificent barn across the country road - 3,550 sf on a full stone foundation, electricity, running water, lower level for equipment, main floor with stalls and work rooms, massive hay loft. Four pastures with water sources, run-in barns with power and water, and additional smaller outbuildings. The infrastructure is thoughtfully designed, whether your dreams include horses, alpacas, heritage sheep, a flourishing market garden, an orchard, festive celebrations, a tranquil retreat center, or simply savoring the seasons as they change across your land.

The guest house tells its own story. Built as stables for those 1930s Arabians, it's now 6,668 sf divided into four independent residences, with cathedral ceilings, and fireplaces. Some families would use this for multi-generational living. Others might see a writer's or artist's retreat, a wedding venue, or wellness center. The bones are spectacular - soaring spaces and abundant light.

Morning swims in the sparkling gunite pool with its serene fieldstone waterfall. Afternoons spent on the newly resurfaced tennis court. Evenings wandering down to the pond, soaking in the tranquility. Or embrace the rhythm of nature: January mornings breaking ice on water troughs, February afternoons tapping maples for syrup, and March evenings tending seedlings in the greenhouse, dreaming of summer tomatoes.

The possibilities are manifold; life on East Hill Farm is generous and abundant.

The History You Can Touch
Walk these 227 acres and feel it: the weight of continuity. Five families in 227 years. Thomas Shepard, who helped found New Marlborough. The Hartwells, who held it for a century. Arabian horse breeders who landed their plane in the pasture. The current family, who pieced the scattered acres back together, whose daughters gathered eggs, boiled sap into syrup, grew the gardens that still bloom today.((Some things do endure. That which matters can be preserved. In a disposable world, permanence is possible. The next chapter begins with you.

The Berkshire Life, Perfected
Twenty minutes to Great Barrington's restaurants and shops. Less than ten to the Southfield Store. Tanglewood for summer concerts, Jacob's Pillow for dance, Butternut for winter skiing. Bradley Airport an hour away, Manhattan and Boston each two and a half hours. But honestly? Once you're here, leaving becomes the hard part.

Mornings at East Hill Farm start with the mourning doves' lullaby that sounds like memory itself. The Sandhill Cranes return each spring to the lower pastures, their distinctive call announcing another season. Summer evenings, you'll sit on the west porch watching the sun set over your pond while fireflies rise from the meadows, and emerge from the woods. Winter nights, you'll build fires in those perfect fireplaces and be grateful they built that beehive oven so large.

Everything here has been cared for with a deep knowledge of history and respect for nature and tradition. The heritage roses still bloom. The stone walls still stand true. The forest trails lead to hidden waterfalls and forgotten cellar holes. The gardens produce abundance. The pastures are ready to graze horses. Or you could simply walk your 227 acres knowing that in a world of constant change, you've found something real, something lasting, something irreplaceable.

East Hill Farm offers what money rarely can buy: authenticity at scale. A genuine 18th-century house that works for 21st-century life. Land enough that you own your own hilltop. Buildings that tell the story of America. Privacy without isolation. History without the museum ropes. And beyond price - a place of profound peace that has endured through every chapter of American history, a hilltop sanctuary.

Wake each morning in that otherworldly, untouchable tranquility that settles over your land as the rest of the world falls away. Watch the sun set where generations have watched it set, Be part of something larger than yourself, while making it entirely your own.

227 acres. 227 years. Some things are meant to be.

Come see.