THE TOWER HILL House rises from land as flat as the soy bean fields down the road in Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore. Only the oak trees rival the four stately stories.

From the front yard, you can see all the way back to Kings Creek's smooth surface. Beyond the creek, the Chesapeake Bay adds another layer of soft blue to the panorama. Tower Hill, originally built in 1746, will be the oldest house on the block.

Inside, the heart-pine floor planks bear tiny nail marks from their former home in a tobacco mill. A large brick fireplace in the kitchen is one of eight throughout the house. The five bedrooms on the upstairs floors each come with a unique style flourish - whether it's a small lamp with a beaded shade, a starburst-patterned quilt or a deep blue on the walls.

Three of the bathrooms share a distinctive feature. Their showers are tucked behind a door in a closet-like compartment, a subtle throwback to the days when the house didn't have indoor plumbing.   Bath tubs ….

A few years ago the house's insides were nothing but a pile of bricks.

Eric Olson and his partner, Burt Cutright, bought Tower Hill from a corporation owned by Pat Robertson in 1998. At the time, the house was a hollowed-out casing. A fire had destroyed the roof and gutted floors that were already warped and rundown. No one, except for grazing sheep, had lived there since 1960.  Peter Bowdoin had built the house more than 250 years ago.

The house also has a ghost,  Nancy Garrett who lives in Cheriton, just up Route 13 from Tower Hill, which passed in and out of her family during the 1800s. She is a descendant of James and Maria Saunders, who bought the house in 1839 and whose broken tombstones are planted in Tower Hill's back yard.

When Garrett read an article in the Eastern Shore News last year that mentioned, as she put it, ``ghostly happenings'' in the house, she knew who to point the finger at.

``I laughed when I saw it and thought, `Well, old Maria's at it,' '' Garrett said.

The picture Garrett has of Maria Saunders is a photograph of an oil portrait. Saunders' dark hair is tucked beneath a ruffled white bonnet that rivals the paleness of her complexion. Heavy lids shield her deep-set brown eyes. It's hard to tell whether the corners of her lips are set in a stern frown or whether they hold the hint of a smirk.

``Everyone has been pronouncing her name wrong,'' the name should sound like mar-I-ah.

Tower Hill left her ancestors' hands when Maria Saunders sold it in 1888. Her husband, James, had died in 1856, and in her later years, Maria moved in with her daughters in Norfolk.

She was buried in the family plot on the estate the year after she sold it.

Although it was unusual for a Colonial house to be made out of brick on the Shore, Tower Hill was built on a creek as was customary. The open Bay could wreak havoc on a structure during a storm. Plus, creeks were the latter-day highways for anyone trying to navigate the Shore, Tower Hill's owners might have had another use for their Kings Creek location: avoiding the customs house at Cherrystone Creek farther up the coast.

Garrett says she used to be able to see a curious hump in the back lawn. In the late afternoon light, shadows fell to either side of the mound, revealing a rise in the earth that ran from the creek to the basement of the house.

Considering the creek's deep waters, and how uncommon it was to build a basement in those days, Garrett thinks the mound could have been a tunnel used to smuggle imported goods past customs.

Today, Tower Hill is run as an Inn. Mariah’s at Tower Hill Bed/Breakfast & Inn Is a 50 seat full service fine dining restaurant and five bedroom Inn owned & operated by Timothy & Melanie Brown. Timothy a award winning chef and in the food and hospitality industry for more than 20 years along with his wife who also has a background in hospitality named the restaurant Mariah’s after the ghost of the house and continued the name of the Inn, Tower Hill as it has been that name since 1839.