Almost in Gilmanton Newsletter 4

Why would anyone build a house way at the east end of Canterbury near the Gilmanton line? As we suggested in our Newsletter last month, we are going to tell you about it now. And if you have been following along with this newsletter series, you probably already have in mind what we are going to report, so considering this is Summer reading, it will be brief.

On 20 May 1727, King George the First granted this land, and thus this 100 acre lot #43, to John Plaistead. Sometime later, possibly by 1791, the Charles Bean family resided there, and may have built the house. We believe that because the town chose to layout the road (V. 3, Page 360 of Canterbury Records) on November first that year. By 1892 the house was gone, so the 101- year-old foundation has now been open to the sky for at least 133 years. A note about the road. It was laid out all the way to what is now the smokehouse on Briar Bush Road. And it followed what was known over 150 years ago by the folks of Hills Corner as “The Old Path”. More on that in a future report.

The site is situated on the South side of Snowshoe Hill Road, upslope about 20 feet from the road, and is easy to spot because the surrounding forest is mature and open. Yet the root cellar part of the foundation is almost choaked with trees, as large as 26 inches, and only about 50% intact. The door sill stone is where it “should be”, near the south-facing wall; the brick mound ruin of the fireplace(s) and chimney is in the typical location near the center of the foundation; and the well is the usual 20 feet away, in this case, to the S-E.

The well-defined crawl space occupies most of the house footprint, and our small exploratory excavation in the root cellar revealed no artifacts except red brick fragments. Thus our conclusion that the building was either carefully dismantled, or moved away intact. Turning our attention to the details of the foundation of at least one fireplace and the chimney, the abundance of 90° angle fieldstones (as further described below) is obvious, and the whole structure has retained much of its original form. By being extended into the root cellar it is located “off center”, as is the front doorway. One more detail. We found one brick with the traditional 45° angle at one end, indicting that indeed there was at least one fireplace as part of the house.

Now two final diagnostic details.

Our search turned up no evidence of a barn or even a shed. Unusual. We did document two short lengths of stone walls near the house, which we interpret as being part of a livestock enclosure.

Also of note, while the walls in all the area around the site are constructed of the typical, partly rounded, glacially altered stones, the foundation stones here are naturally flat on all six sides, having been weathered from bedrock that breaks on flat planes. Thus we conclude that they were brought some distance to this site. Unusual. Humm. We wondered why.

There is an answer. The current owner has done research on this property that had been housing for a number of families over the 100 or so years it was standing. The conclusion: they didn’t need a barn because the dwelling was built as tenant housing for the folks who worked the farms of rich neighbors. The big estate provided them with food, and maybe even firewood. And had the resources to “import” the finest foundation stones in the area to support a stoutly built home. This also explains why during this study we have documented other sites that have no evidence of a barn or fencing for crops and gardens. More on that as the documentation survey continues.

A final note. In his 1912 history, James O. Lyford cites that the last occupant of this site was “William Robinson, a negro”.

Up Next: We take our mid-summer break from raking, lopping, scraping, sawing around another foundation to report a site that has no well, no barn, no foundation of any sort. Submit your speculations on what we will report to: cellarholesurveys@gmail.com. We will respond.