About mid-September, 1676, a number of the rebel followers of frontiersman Nathaniel Bacon seized the brick house of Major Allen and fortified it.

[5] The garrison, commanded at various times by William Rookings, Arthur Long, Joseph Rogers and John Clements, retained control of the house for over three months while their cause declined.

Ingram dispersed his army in small garrisons, and as the demoralized troops began to plunder indiscriminately, the condition of the colony soon became deplorable.

On December 29, a loyal force aboard the vessel Young Prince, captured an unidentified "fort" which many historians have identified as Bacon's Castle.

After withstanding a brief siege early in January, 1677, the loyalists used the "fort" as a base of operations for the last engagements of the rebellion, which ended before the month was out.

[5] Bacon was the proprietor of Curles Neck Plantation in Henrico County, about 30 miles upriver on the northern bank of the James River.

During the Civil War, Private Sidney Lanier (2nd Battalion, Macon Volunteers), later one of the "Poets of the Confederacy", was stationed at nearby Burwell's Bay from May 1863 to October 1864 with the Confederate signal corps.

Virginia Hankins, or Ginna, as she was called, rejected Sidney Lanier's May 1867 proposal of marriage solely because of the obligation she felt towards her motherless younger brothers and sisters, but they remained lifelong friends.

Captain Hankins was killed by William Underwood in a duel on October 18, 1866, at Isle of Wight Courthouse over insults previously exchanged between the two men while drinking in a tavern.

[8] Like other James River Plantations, Bacon's Castle faced the problems of loss of manpower due to the emancipation of slaves, and insurmountable debt following the Civil War.

Bacon's Castle now operates as a house museum and historic site with 40-acres of outbuildings and dependencies including barns, slave and tenant quarters, smokehouses, and a rare example of a 17th-century English formal garden.

Notable architectural features include the triple-stacked chimneys, shaped Flemish gables, and carved compass roses decorating the cross beams in many of the public rooms.