Lucy Williams, a real estate agent who represented the buyer, said she had listed the house within the past couple of years but it didn’t sell because the housing market hadn’t recovered.

Williams had shown the house to the buyer in the past. “This time, they stepped up to the plate and bought,” said Williams, an agent with The Steele Group Sotheby’s International Realty — Richmond.

“The house is so fabulous, on such a wonderful piece of land with so much history,” she said.

The house was built in the 1860s as a hunting lodge, converted into a three-story mansion in 1907 and updated from 1988 to 1993. In 1999, then-Gov. Jim Gilmore stayed in the house while the Executive Mansion was renovated.

The property became tied up in court for more than three years as part of a divorce settlement between beverage distributor Larry E. Brown and Elizabeth G. Brown, until she was granted ownership in June 2011. At one point during the divorce proceedings, the property was sold at auction, but the sale contract eventually was voided.