It sounds like the unlikeliest of marriages: Wilton House Museum, an 18th-century Varina plantation home relocated to Richmond’s near West End in the 1930s, and virtual reality, a simulated experience that gives the user an immersive feel of a virtual world.

Talk about a new way to present history. Wilton House had been temporarily closed for months as significant paint and staircase restoration projects were completed. It will reopen March 13 and visitors will have the option of taking the VR tour after the house tour, included in the admission price, providing a far richer understanding of how the house functioned in the 18th century.

As in past years, visitors can tour the 1753 Georgian house built for William Randolph III, which was the centerpiece of a 2,000-acre tobacco plantation and at one point home to the largest enslaved population in Henrico. It was at Wilton that the Randolph family entertained some of colonial Virginia’s biggest names, including George Washington and then-governor Thomas Jefferson who visited Lafayette when he was headquartered at Wilton, while 2,000 Continental and Virginia militia troops made camp there.

Because the house now sits in a residential neighborhood overlooking the James River, visitors have been unable to get a sense of the house as part of a much larger whole as it had been in Varina. But visitors will now be able to put on a VR headset and tour the original property and outbuildings, learning about the land, buildings, enslaved life, and tobacco cultivation.

To create the virtual reality tour, extensive research was required, including walking the original grounds in Varina, where it was determined that the Pocahontas Bridge cuts right through the original Wilton property. Insurance documents provided dimensions for the various buildings. At one time a developer had purchased the land and done multiple studies in anticipation of building. Topographical maps, tax records and blueprints contributed to a fuller sense of Wilton.

Piecing together an enslaved life

Between 1747 and 1846, Wilton was home to between approximately 27 and 105 enslaved African American men, women, and children. Because of the lack of documentation from the Randolph family as well as the destruction of many of Henrico County’s records during the Civil War, there was little known about the lives of Wilton’s enslaved residents beyond two sets of wills and inventories from the late 18th and early 19th century.

In 1998, William & Mary Center for Archaeological Research did an excavation of a series of dwellings located north of the Randolph home so they could piece together the lives of some of the enslaved people All of this was useful in determining how Wilton was originally laid out.

Every bit of information that could be obtained was turned over to Shenandoah University’s Center for Immersive Learning so they could then create the virtual world of the original Wilton property circa 1785, beginning at the dock and heading up the hill toward the enslaved people’s quarters. “We provided all of the content, and they did all of the IT side,” says Joseph Rizzo, executive director of Wilton House Museum. “This is very much an exhibit, so we wanted it to be very content-centric.”

Strapping on the adjustable Quest 3 VR headset and using a controller to navigate around the grounds provides visitors with a fascinating look at the complex goings-on of a major tobacco plantation. “Over a hundred people lived on this property and most of them were enslaved,” Rizzo says. “That’s why we start the story on the dock because that’s where the enslaved workers would have arrived before heading uphill to their quarters.”

Visitors stand in a circled area and can turn 360 degrees to see what’s ahead, to the side and behind them. They have the option of listening to explanations of the various points highlighted on the VR tour or reading about them. Rizzo says they deliberately chose user-friendly headsets so people would easily adjust to them, likely not an issue for video game users who will also recognize Unreal Engine, the 3D computer graphics game engines used to create Wilton’s VR tour.

Phase one of the VR tour encompasses such topics as archeology, the overseer’s house, the outdoor kitchen, tobacco growing, construction and the bluffs overlooking the shimmering water of the river. Although not yet started, for phase two, they’ll focus on the 1930s when the house had several additions but had not yet been moved to Richmond. Rizzo says they’re considering what phase three might entail.

One highlight of the VR tour is a sign listing all the known names of enslaved people at Wilton, a powerful reminder of its bigger, and until now, mostly untold story. “We wanted to put everything in context,” Rizzo says. “This is not just a beautiful home.”

Wilton House Museum is located at 215 S. Wilton Rd. Learn more at wiltonhousemuseum.org.