Northampton County Court Green in Eastville is one of the earliest and most complete court greens in Virginia, with early court buildings and later structures that reflect more than 300 years of continuous local government. The Eastern Shore of Virginia was one of the eight original shires of the Virginia colony. Captain John Smith explored the region in 1608, Jamestown residents established a salt works there in 1614, a permanent English settlement existed near the peninsula's southern tip by 1620, and local commissioners had been appointed by 1632. In 1677, as population moved northward, the Hornes, now Eastville, became Northampton's county seat. The court met in private homes and taverns until a courthouse was built on the Green in 1690, and the oldest continuous county court records in the United States, dating from 1632, have been kept there. The district includes the 1731 courthouse, later moved and preserved; a rare early clerk's office from the second half of the 18th century or about 1800; a debtors' prison from about 1815 that is considered the state's best surviving example of its type; a jail complex from about 1913; an 1899 Romanesque Revival courthouse that served through the 20th century until court functions moved in 2006; Lawyers' Row offices built between 1820 and 1985; an old brick store from about 1810; the Eastville Inn, a rare surviving courthouse tavern with an earliest section from the late 18th century; and a Confederate monument created in 1913. The area is listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places, and restoration work by Northampton County and the Northampton Branch, APVA Preservation Virginia, supported by the Norfolk Foundation, was carried out in connection with the 400th anniversary of the 1607 Jamestown Settlement.
