Oak Forest is the seat of a prosperous Nash County plantation which has remained in single family ownership for over one hundred years and the site of two significant houses--one Federal style, the other Neo-Classical Revival. Built in the mid l820s for Reverend William Bellamy, the earlier style house follows the hall and parlor plan typical of regional vernacular houses of the eighteenth century; the finish is executed in a vernacular Federal idiom which retains elements of the Georgian. Dr James Jones Philips purchased the farm in 1863 and sold it to his son Joseph seven years later. Active in local politics, Joseph Battle Philips was also one of the area's leading scientific farmers. Around 1905 he hired D J Rose, a prominent Rocky Mount contractor, to build the Neo-Classical Revival house for his family. Together the houses and their outbuildings represent not only the architectural but the historical development associated with a large single-family agricultural complex in eastern North Carolina. - NRHP