The Village of Old Spring Hope and Foxwood Village sit on the same stretch of West Old Spring Hope Road in Nash County, developed together by Murphy Downes Land & Home. Both are planned around larger homesites, traditional architecture and a neighborhood environment that keeps the character of the land. The Village of Old Spring Hope is recorded and selling, with homes finished and under construction. Foxwood Village is at preliminary plat, twenty homesites along three new streets.
Homes in both are designed by DRB Design and built on site by Alpha Contracting. Six plans, named for the places that shaped the people building them. Murphy Downes founder John Downes grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and builds toward the same thing here: stick‑built houses, front porches, chickens in the back if you want them, and neighbors close enough to know.
The recorded community of the two. Phase 1 and Phase 2 are platted in Mannings Township, where West Old Spring Hope Road meets Sheep Pasture Road, on land zoned A‑1 with a 40,000 square foot minimum homesite. Recorded lots run from 0.92 acres to 1.84, with addresses on Green Downs Trail and Good Shepherd Trail.
Covenants set the terms before the first foundation was poured. Stick built only, no modular or manufactured homes. Minimum 1,400 heated square feet for a one story home, 1,800 for a two story. Garages sized for two to four cars. No chain link anywhere, six foot maximum on fences, and outbuildings that match the house. Up to ten hens behind an opaque privacy fence, no roosters, horses capped at five. Lots 12 and 13 in Phase 2 may also keep goats and cows and build a detached guest house.
Twenty homesites planned on West Old Spring Hope Road, built around larger lots, traditional architecture and a neighborhood environment that maintains the character of the land. Three streets, named the way a place gets named when someone has actually walked it: Gentle Breeze Way, Sunny Day Way and Foxwood Village Drive.
Foxwood is at preliminary plat stage. Plans, pricing and homesite releases are being finalized now. Two of the six Murphy Downes plans, The Fox Hall and The Fox Hollow, take their names from the same place this neighborhood does.
Six plans run from 1,454 to 2,402 heated square feet, named for the places that shaped the people building them. Every plan is built on site, board by board, and meets the recorded minimum square footage.
Murphy Downes Land & Home was founded by John Downes, who left Limerick, Ireland, arrived in the United States in 1994, and built his home base here in 2003. Limerick is a small historic town of stone architecture and tight neighborhoods, the kind of place where traditions get handed down and home means more than a house. That is the reference point for everything he develops in North Carolina.
Co‑founder Shawn Murphy works the whole arc, from finding the land and evaluating it through community planning, infrastructure, construction and bringing finished homes to market. His standard is one sentence long: develop communities we would be proud to live in ourselves. In practice that means preserving the character of the land, larger homesites wherever the ground allows, and neighborhoods that feel settled rather than overbuilt.
Downtown Nashville sits just up the road, where The Nashville Junction at 723 South Barnes Street anchors The Junction Social District and hosts the Farmers Market every Friday from 3:00 to 7:00. J.W. Glover Park and the Harold D. Cooley Library serve the surrounding streets, and the Nashville Blooming Festival has brought the town together every Mother's Day weekend since 1997. A short drive east, Rocky Mount Mills has turned a restored cotton mill campus on Falls Road into a destination for craft breweries including Bright Penny Brewing, a run of restaurants, and River and Twine, a tiny house hotel built into the original mill buildings. The Imperial Centre for the Arts and Sciences holds a children's museum, the Cummins Planetarium, an arts center and a community theatre.
