The St. Catherine’s’ Holiday House Tour offers a wonderful opportunity to explore five exceptional homes (and their outdoor spaces) in the Windsor Farms neighborhood. Some of the participating houses were built when the enclave was originally developed in the late 1920s and 1930s. All will be decorated for the holidays. 

The tour, presented by the all girls’ school and now in its third year, will be held rain or shine on Sunday, Dec. 2, from 1 to 4 p.m. And here’s what you can see: Three homes on Lock Lane — numbers 205, 303 and 315 — and two on Nottingham Road, numbers 213 and 215. The proximity of the five houses makes it a walkable tour. 

Here are some of the highlights: 

One is the whitewashed, English Georgian home of Susan and Philip Sprinkle at 205 Lock Lane. It's filled with fine British watercolors, luminous European oil paintings and antiques collected by Susan, an art restorer and consultant who has a gallery in New York City and owns Stanley Fine Art & Antiques on Grove Avenue. (Susan and part of her family’s living room can be seen in the September/October issue of R•Home magazine.)

Martha and John Crowley’s place at 303 Lock Lane is Tudor in style and pays homage to the grand Tudor manors Keevil and Stokesay in England. The home, built in 1920, is one of the first in Windsor Farms. It also has ties to Agecroft Hall nearby. Two stone carvings used on the house’s exterior came to Richmond with the crates and barrels that brought Agecroft itself. Well-known and Richmond-revered landscape designer Charles Gillette had his hand in this home’s boxwood garden, as well as outdoor spaces at two other homes on the tour.

Jane and Billy Armfield’s home, “Milburne” (pictured), is truly not to be missed. It sits on five acres near a granite crest that overlooks the James River. The 315 Lock Lane home was designed by nationally renowned architect William Lawrence Bottomley in 1934. The house has been referred to as “one of America’s greatest Colonial Revival masterpieces,” and it’s a place I’ve dreamed of seeing ever since I read Susan Hume Frazier’sThe Architecture of William Lawrence Bottomley, in which it's featured. 

Frazier notes in her book how Milburne “was the last and widely considered the best of Bottomley’s Virginia houses,” a place where his gifts “were most surely expressed.” (Milburne also graces the cover and is profiled in 1985's The Work of William Lawrence Bottomley in Richmond, by William Bainter O’Neal.) The “flying” cantilevered staircase at Milburne is said to stun in the house’s elliptically shaped entryway. With its Palladian gracefulness and size, Milburne rivals the James River Plantation homes in its looks and presence. 

There’s much, much more on the tour. Like the chance to experience Katherine and Jim Hill’s home at 213 Nottingham, where they've created a modern, neutral-painted background for their considerable collection of modern art within a formal brick Georgian house. A painting by Wolf Kahn draws looks above the fireplace, and their family room includes an original coffee table designed by Eero Saarinen. Both are worth seeing.

Then there's 215 Nottingham Road, the home of Bruce Gottwald Jr., which provides contrast, revelations and building ideas. A much newer house — it was built in 1990 and renovated and expanded last year — it shows how fine craftsmanship and architectural details can make a new home look just as grand and distinguished as its older neighbors.  

You can purchase tickets online by clicking here. Advance tickets, which will be sold through Nov. 28, cost $20. Tickets will also be available the day of for $25 at tables in front of each house.