Springwood Inn

Tucked into wooded foothills on the eastern edge of Anniston, Alabama, Springwood Inn invites travelers to sleep inside a genuine piece of the city’s founding history. The property occupies a Southern Georgian home built around 1882 for Samuel Noble, one of the industrialists who helped establish Anniston, and its story since then has taken more turns than most historic houses ever see.

Noble had come to Alabama from Rome, Georgia to help develop the region’s iron industry, and he built his residence at the prominent corner of 13th Street and Woodstock Avenue in what was then a young and ambitious town. He died only six years after the house was completed, and his daughter went on to occupy the home. Ownership changed hands several times over the following decades before Dr. Woodruff Sr. and his family purchased the property in 1947, settling in for what would become a 67 year stewardship that saw the house nicknamed Camwood by the family that raised its children there.

The most dramatic chapter came around 1967, when the Anniston School Board sought the land through eminent domain. Rather than see the historic residence demolished, Dr. Gerald Woodruff Jr. arranged to have the entire house relocated to its current mountainside site along Booger Hollow Road, where it has stood ever since with front porch views toward Mt. Cheaha. The home is listed on the Alabama Register of Historic Homes as the Noble-Woodruff House, and it retains original fireplaces, full length windows, and heart pine floors from its nineteenth century construction. Current owners Bob and Carolyn Orchid purchased the estate in 2014 and renamed it Springwood, a nod to the mountainside spring that still flows through the woods and down to the property’s pond.

Four guest rooms fill the main house today: the Samuel Noble Room, the Dr. Lightwood Room, the Dr. Woodruff Room, and the Eastham Room, each with a private bath and heart pine floors underfoot. The Noble and Woodruff rooms share a Jack and Jill bathroom and are typically booked together by parties who want the connected space, bringing the combined rate for both rooms to 295 dollars a night. A separate two bedroom Springwood Guest Cottage sits apart from the main house for guests who prefer more privacy, though breakfast there is available at the main inn for an additional 15 dollars per person rather than included automatically.

The twenty acre grounds are as much a draw as the rooms themselves. Guests can walk garden paths, relax in a hammock strung beneath a magnolia tree, play a round on the inn’s nine hole disc golf course, or use the on site tennis court. The Chief Ladiga Trail for biking and walking runs nearby, and the wraparound verandas and library, stocked with coffee and snacks, give the inn a quiet, unhurried pace that matches its wooded setting above Anniston.

Check in begins at 3 p.m. and check out is at 11 a.m., with a gourmet breakfast included for guests staying in the main house. The inn asks for cancellations at least seven days before arrival to avoid forfeiting the deposit, with a longer 21 day window during major regional events like Talladega race weeks, when rates also rise. The main house does not accept pets in order to preserve its quiet atmosphere, though the Guest Cottage allows one or two animals for a non-refundable fee, and the entire property, porches included, is non-smoking.

Springwood Inn sits close enough to central Anniston and neighboring Oxford to make dinner out or a day of local sightseeing easy, while still feeling worlds away thanks to its wooded, mountainside setting. For visitors drawn to Alabama’s iron and railroad era history, or simply looking for a quiet historic retreat with a view of Cheaha, the inn offers a rare overnight stay inside a home that has already survived one relocation and outlived the families who called it home for generations.