The Spates family dug a new foundation and moved the entire structure 100 feet back from the road. Photos this page, courtesy of the Spates family.
restaurant, and enlisted Dorothy’ s sister Annabelle Sole, as well as her brother Bill Fox, an experienced builder, to convert the farmhouse into a restaurant with a commercial kitchen, multiple restrooms and multiple dining rooms. Like many houses at the time, it was only eight feet from Comus Road, so they began the challenging task of moving the entire building 100 feet back from the road! An astounding feat with mid-20th century equipment, they completed the task in a few months.
Joe Spates, George and Dorothy’ s son, who was about 10 years old at the time, remembers the house propped up on huge pilings, the mammoth machines that dug a new foundation, and careful moving of the 100 year-old structure inch by inch on huge tracked vehicles. The Spates later added a long porch on the upper level, which was later enclosed, and now offers a beautiful, panoramic view of Sugarloaf Mountain sunsets.
They named it The Comus Inn and opened as a restaurant for the first time in 1960, serving lunch and dinner Wednesdays through Sundays, closing in the winter.“ The whole family worked there. Mom, Dad, aunts, uncles and cousins. I cleared tables and washed dishes, but I was too young to serve tables,” Joe recalls. Joe fondly remembers popular menu items: T-bone steak for $ 4.50, fried chicken for $ 2.50, country ham, pork chops and biscuits. The restaurant quickly became a community gathering place. The chicken house was leased out as a popular antique and furnishings store and attracted its own clientele of shoppers, who then would stop into the restaurant for dinner.
A classic tale of neighborliness Joe remembers occurred during a huge snowstorm, probably 1964. The restaurant was closed for the winter, and a family from Illinois was stuck in the snow in their car directly in front of the restaurant. Joe’ s cousin lived at the restaurant in a small upstairs apartment, and Joe and
his cousin helped the family, with their two small children, into the restaurant, where they slept on the floor for a few days until the roads were cleared.
Country Restaurant Meets English Pub
The restaurant stayed in the Spates family until it was sold to LeRoy and Carolyn Morgan in 1973, who lived nearby on Peachtree Road. The Morgans loved the idea of hosting a village pub in the spirit of Carolyn’ s home country, England. They continued the country style menu and added pub food staples such as chicken pot pie, and carried on the tradition the Spates established as one of the only restaurants for miles. During this era, many people who are still in the Ag Reserve today enjoyed favorite simple dishes such as lasagna, fried chicken, and burgers with family and friends, and often ran into neighbors there. The bar of the restaurant maintained its interior log cabin walls, creating a cozy pub style that was frequented by many locals.
In the 1960s The Comus Inn sheltered a stranded family whose car was stuck in a major snowstorm.
10 plenty I autumn harvest 2025