Glen Royall Mill Village

Royall Cotton Mill put up these cottages for the people who worked in it, starting around 1900 and continuing into the 1920s. About 200 of them are still standing, and the village is a National Register district. The lots are small, the houses are small, and almost every one that sells has been renovated by somebody, sometimes carefully and sometimes not. The mill building at the center of the neighborhood is being redeveloped. What holds the place together is closeness: five minutes from White Street, and neighbors near enough that the block parties here are the ones the rest of Wake Forest hears about.

Where it is

The village grew up around the mill, a few blocks off downtown Wake Forest and five minutes from White Street. That closeness is the whole point of living here. You can walk to dinner and walk home again without moving your car, which is not true of most neighborhoods in this town. The trade is that you start every trip from the middle of town, so leaving means threading the downtown blocks and whatever traffic is on them. At five in the afternoon that costs you a few minutes. The rest of the day it costs you nothing.

What to know if you're moving here

The entry price here is one of the lowest in town and the reason is square footage. Budget for an inspector who knows old construction before you go any further, because the age of these houses drives the rest of the list.

• Houses run roughly $300,000 to $475,000, one of the lower entry points in Wake Forest.
• These are mill cottages with small rooms and small lots, and most have no garage, so street parking matters more than you expect.
• There is no HOA, which means no dues and no pool, and nothing gets maintained for you.
• Children are zoned for Wake Forest Elementary, Wake Forest Middle and Wake Forest High.
• Anything built between 1900 and the 1920s has been rewired, replumbed and reroofed at least once, and the quality of that work varies from address to address.
• National Register listing and local historic district design review are two different programs, and which one applies changes what you may do to the outside.

What to do if you're visiting

Start on White Street, five minutes away and the reason most people come to this end of town at all. Then walk the village itself.

• A reasonable first stop is Black & White Coffee Roasters.
• Browsing the Gallery at the Cotton Company turns into an hour if you let it.
• For dinner and a drink, Bodega and Two weeks Brewing Company Wake Forest sit within the same few blocks.
• The mill is worth a slow lap even mid-redevelopment, because its scale explains why the cottages sit where they do.
• Side streets are where you see what people have done with a hundred-year-old porch.