Several o🦩ld broken-up tea chests are on the market for 🥃a tad under $7 million.
Now that might seem “steep” no matter how significant the tea — but those chests come inside a beautiful Victorian waterfront property showcasing picturesque views over a historic harbor in Massachusetts.
The words tea, harbor and Massachusetts brin🎃g to mind Boston’s troubled history with the humble cuppa. This home, whose listing news , is located at 405 Ocean Ave. in Marblehead, a coastal town some 16 miles from Boston.
It has an asking price of $6.79 million, and stands on Marblehead Neck overlooking the ocean on one side and Marblehead Harbor on the other. That’s the very harbor where the American Continental Navy was formed in the fall of 1775 at General George Washington’s behest, some two years after that famous tea dumping in the Boston harbor — otherwise known as the Boston Tea Party — by disgruntled merchants led by Sam Adams, an act that sped Boston to the point of revolution.
This listing’s tea connection, however, is a little more recent and less dramatic than that of Boston Harbor’s. The house was built in 1880 by William Gardner Barker and eventually passed on to W. Gardner Barker, the longt♔ime head of the Lipton Tea Company. The Barker family sold it off some 100 years later, in 1990.
“That was the end of the Barkers and the Lipton connection,” the property’s listing ageᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚnt Liz Walters, of Coldwell Banker Realty in Marblehead, told The Post.
Well, not quite. The Lipton legacy lives on in the home’s basement den, which has wood-paneled walls that are thriftily, and even quirkily, created from tea che🥂sts.
“W. Gardner Barker had them mounted on the walls in that room,” said Walters. “When the house was sold, the new owner removed them, but the current owner reinstalled them after they bought the☂ property in 2014.”
The tea chest wood is 🐽embossed with writing and emblems, possibly marking places of origin and tea merchants, with whom Lipton had business dealings.
“It’s an interesting decorative touch honoring the Lipton connection,” said Walters. “The one that stands out to me has some sort of bird on it. I just wonder if that’s the emblem for one of the tea companies. There’s another one that actually has a tea company name. Someone might spend some time and do some research into them and see where they came from,” added Walters. “They’re pretty cool.”
Originally, this property was a massive four-lot parcel, but two were sold off in the 1990s.ཧ That still left this home on two lots totaling 1.82 acres.
Inside this spacious 6,500-sq🐠uare-foot dwelling, modern utilities pair with antique embellishment.
“It’s the perfect blend of old and new really,” said Walters. “You have a chef’s ki🐈tchen with new plumbing and granite countertops, but there are two original butler pantries wonderfully preserved.”
The residence now has five bedrooms and six bathrooms, including the second-floor primary sꦦuite, which has a sitting room, t🦋oo.
“When you step into the primary suite, you🐲 see the ocean out of the windows,” said Walters.
There’s also a bedroom suiওte on the third floor and a guest suite down on the lower level, whose bathroom has a steam shower.
“It was important to the owner to have a nice bathroom for ✨guests when they come to stay,ไ” Walters added.
O♏ddly, those tea chests might not be the most attention-grabbing decorative wall feature, because a large mural graces the first-floor hallway✱.
“It says 1972 on it and it looks lik𒀰e Salem Harbor. The Barkers had connections to Salem,” said Walters of the neighboring town, best known for its murderous witch trials. Indeed, founding owner William Gardner Baker used 405 Ocean as his breezy summer residence, while his primary residence was in Salem.
A huge wraparound porch connects the house to the terraced grounds cut from solid rock “ledge.” An easement leads to a small beach, and a network of small stone steps, likely dating back to the early 1900s and the original Mr. Barker’s ownership, which guide through the grounds. One leads to a grassy spot; another set heads to what used to be perennial gardens. Meanwhile, another set leads to an overlook of the harbor where a small shingled summer house gives grand views of Marblehead Rock, Children’s Island, Castle Rock Park and the Marblehead Lighthouse.
A sign on the unassuming shack reads “The T🍌ea House.”
“It’s very small, with just a seat, and it’s got these huge heavy wooden windows you need to crank up to get open to let the breeze through,” Walters said. “It will be always be called the little Tea House; all the owners have al🐠ways called it that.”
