Preserving Canterbury

A 200-year-old live oak tree stretches across the entrance to Canterbury Stables on Wrightsville Avenue. One of the barn cats, Midnight, likes to climb and sit on its branches, says EMMA KATHERINE WARREN.

Warren, seventeen years old, is the daughter of EMILY WARREN (above), a co-owner of the fifty-five-year-old Canterbury Stables. The space is a longtime destination for showing and riding horses. In 2022, JOE MCKINNEY and ADAM SOSNE, co-owners of Wilmington development company McAdams Homes bought the property from its original owner. The Warren family contributed to the purchase and now leads the stables’ daily operations.

The live oak tree is a statement as guests enter the stables, Emily Warren says. In the two years the Warrens have looked over the property, they’ve planted ten more live oaks throughout the farm.

The new plantings are one of many projects the Warren family has completed since acquiring the property; others include renovating the clubhouse, grazing pens, and chicken coop. But the relationship between the trees, the old and the new, is a fitting lens to describe Canterbury’s future.

The stables have remained a destination for show horses and riding lessons. Emily Warren is revitalizing the space by opening the property to host local organizations such as paws4people and First Presbyterian Church as well as staging the property as a pastoral backdrop for farm-to-table cooking classes and weddings.

Emily Warren was born and raised in Wilmington. She grew up taking riding lessons and showing horses at Canterbury for a decade, under the mentorship of the original owner, LINDA SHELHART.

The sport of showing horses has remained throughout her life – her daughter now shows horses across the Southeast – but Emily Warren’s “barn family” cemented her love for Canterbury, she recalls.

After getting her degree at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, she met her husband, Parrish. The two got married in 2005 and bought the 100-year-old Lewis Farm homestead in Rocky Point, where the pair lived for ten years and Emma Katherine was born. But after a while, they were ready to move closer to the beach.

Experiences throughout her life, or “stepping stones,” prepped Emily Warren to run Canterbury, she says. Farms she worked at in college and into her adulthood prepared her to take on this project.

“I don’t want to say ‘destiny,’ but it’s just weird how things have always worked out,” she says.

The Warren family ensures everything runs smoothly at the stables, whether it’s feeding the twenty chickens – all named – or hosting a wedding, Emma Katherine Warren says. Even as she finishes high school, Emma Katherine Warren works at the property teaching lessons to some of the fifteen horseback riding students and leading Canterbury Crew Club, a horse enthusiast club of about twenty local girls.

Using the stables for gatherings such as Canterbury Crew Club and other events is an addition to the space’s offerings that Emily Warren is particularly excited about. Running the stables combines her three favorite things: horses, interior design, and entertaining.

Interior design is more than just a hobby for Emily Warren. She’s been the president of Traditions Interior Designs since 2008. Designing the modern but rustic clubhouse interior and laying out tablescapes for dinner parties were skills she knew she could incorporate into running Canterbury. She also plans to build a tiny house on the property that could be used as an Airbnb or bridal suite.

“My wheels are already turning about how we would decorate that,” she says.

When Shelhart was ready to sell Canterbury, the Warrens knew the asking price was above their limit. A connection through Emma Katherine Warren’s horseback riding led Emily Warren to McKinney, who proposed that he and Sosne fund the purchase. The Warrens provided a lesser share of the purchase, but most of their contribution is through “sweat equity,” Emily Warren says.

There was never one conversation that decided the Warren family would take over daily operations at Canterbury, Emily Warren says. The decision was obvious as soon as McKinney and Sosne confirmed the property would not be turned into a residential site, which they briefly considered early on.

Emma Katherine Warren adds that her mother always wanted to be a part of the stables, even as a child riding horses there.

“She always wanted to be in Canterbury, be a part of it,” she says. “Nobody else wanted to take the initiative other than her.”

The Warren family runs the stables, as they have experience with horses and farms, but the Sosne and McKinney families are also involved outside of financing the project. Sosne loves trees; he’s the one who planted the live oaks, Emily Warren says.

Although Sosne’s beloved live oaks will take generations to reach maturity, the families hope their children and grandchildren will be able to experience their beauty as the property is handed down.

“All of us,” Emily Warren adds, “the Sosnes, the McKinneys, the Warrens would all say, ‘Pass it down.’”

To view more of photographer Logan Burke’s work, go to loganburkephoto.com.

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