RESTORED SHAKER VILLAGE OFFERS VISITORS A RELAXED STAY.

Byline: Bryan Woolley Dallas Morning News

The pristine village of Pleasant Hill, built nearly two centuries ago by a radically idealistic Christian sect, is a kind of American Brigadoon.

The sheep and cattle grazing on the hills, the horse nickering in its pen, the cat sunning itself in the doorway prepare your mind for pastoral peace even before you cross the threshold into the unique world of a Shaker room, breathtaking in its simplicity, its beauty and otherworldly calm.

The other world into which you've stepped is a slower, quieter century. And at Pleasant Hill, that century was a time of total devotion to a religious ideal that's embodied in the village itself. On this hill, in the midst of Kentucky's magnificent Bluegrass region, the Shakers tried to build Utopia.

Ultimately, they failed. Only a handful of Shakers survive today. All of them are old and live in Maine. No Shaker has lived at Pleasant Hill since 1910, and the last member of the community died in 1923. Even before she died, her home had started to fall into ruin.

But in the early 1960s, a nonprofit corporation bought the village and began raising money to restore it to its early 19th-century appearance and atmosphere. A native Kentuckian, James Lowry Cogar, the first curator of Colonial Williamsburg, was hired to oversee the work. By 1992, all of the buildings still standing had been restored.

Today, Pleasant Hill, just a few minutes' drive from Lexington, is one of the loveliest, most restful vacation spots and conference centers in the country.

The sect that built Pleasant Hill began in a far different kind of place - the grimy industrial city of Manchester, England - in the 18th century. It called itself the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing.

But outsiders, observing the ecstatic, dancelike movements of the worshipers during their services, called them ``Shaking Quakers,'' and then just ``Shakers,'' a name the believers ultimately used themselves.

Their leader was an illiterate textile mill worker named Ann Lee, who had become convinced that the only way to salvation was through celibacy and confession of sin. She also believed herself to be the female incarnation of Jesus Christ.

Suffering persecution in England, a group of Shakers embarked for America in 1774. By 1776, they had founded a village in upstate New York, and a few years later, Mother Ann, as her followers called her, joined them there.

Although Mother Ann died in 1784 at age 48, the Shakers continued in their faith, and founded 19 utopian villages of their believers across the young country from Maine to Kentucky.

Pleasant Hill was established in 1805, when a farmer named Elisha Thomas became a Shaker and turned his land over to the sect, as converts were required to do, because all property was owned in common by the members. Over the years, their landholdings increased as their membership grew.

The Shakers believed in the equality of the races and the sexes, and in celibacy. They lived and worshiped communally, but the men and women resided separately in several large residence halls, with separate doorways and staircases for their use. Every member of the community had a job to do in the village workshops and fields.

At the height of its prosperity, about 500 people lived at Pleasant Hill. Over 105 years, the Shakers constructed 270 buildings; 33 remain, including the meetinghouse, the residence halls and several workshops.

They raised wheat, oats, rye, flax, corn and potatoes and tended orchards of 800 trees. They also raised seeds for planting and herbs for medicines; in their workshops, they made brooms, wooden buckets and barrels, shoes, woolen goods, cheese and preserves.

Some of their buildings - designed with a simple purity worthy of the ancient Greeks - are now museums of the Shakers' life. The trustees' building, where the male and female leaders of the community lived and had their offices, now houses one of the finer restaurants in Kentucky.

And in this building, built in 1839, stands a stunning spiral staircase which, to one looking upward, resembles the inside of a nautilus shell.

Several other of the buildings have been converted to housing for visitors. Although a few concessions have been made to modern habits - a television in every room and soft-drink and ice machines in the basement - painstaking efforts have been made to re-create the Shaker living spaces of the past.

All the visitors' rooms are furnished with replicas of the simple chairs, beds, bureaus and tables that have made Shaker furniture design famous all over the world. Electric candlesticks stand in sconces that hang from a row of wooden pegs around the walls. Clean, simple white curtains cover the ancient sash windows.

Outside, even overnight visitors must park their cars in lots hidden from view, and no motorized vehicles are allowed on the gravel main street through the center of the village.

There are demonstrations throughout the spring and summer months of Shaker crafts, such as broom-making and coopers' work, and shops where the goods made by the volunteers may be purchased.

But the best moment of all is to be alone in the meetinghouse when the last sun of the day shines through the west windows and reflects off the shiny wooden floor on which the Shakers danced, writhed, sang and shouted in the ecstasy of their faith.

Their ghosts seem still there, offering glances into another world.

On Location

For more information, contact the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Ky.: [phone].

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Photo, Box

Photo: An ox cart moseying through Pleasant Hill, Ky., reminds visitors of village life 150 years ago.

Bryan Woolley/Dallas Morning News

Box: On Location (See text)