As its name might suggest, Meeting House Hill Road was once the center of Antrim’s religious and governmental life.
The Antrim Historical Society is working to highlight all five of Antrim’s distinct villages through educational signs – starting with the village at the heart of Antrim’s founding – Antrim Center Village.
Meeting House Hill Road and Miltimore Road include some of the oldest and most iconic buildings in Antrim’s history, including the Grange building, the Uplands Inn and the Old Stone Church, along with a cemetery with stones dating as far back as the early 1700s.
“It’s hard to imagine that this location just up the hill on Meeting House Road was the center of both government and religious activities,” Historical Society member Rick Wood said. “Until Clinton Road and Route 202 were completed, Meeting House Road with the primary means of getting from Antrim to Hillsborough. Not an easy trek for sure.”
The center of town has shifted in the years since, particularly with the completion of Route 202, but the Historical Society wants to recognize the importance of the former center of Antrim.
“Initially, the Historical Society is working on the first of two historical markers that we hope to have in place by the Antrim Home and Harvest event,” Wood said.
The first will be a “Welcome to Antrim” sign located downtown that will depict the location of the five historic villages. The second – though hopefully not the last, Wood said – would be to highlight some of the locations of the Antrim Center. Wood is scheduled to appear in front of the town’s Zoning Board on Sept. 3 to ask for relief from the town’s sign ordinances, to allow the signs, which are larger than typically allowed.
The signs can only touch upon the town’s rich history, but Wood said there’s a plan in the works to supplement the physical signs with an online digital map with more interesting historical images and content.
The landscape of the Old Stone Church is idyllic, but its origins stem from a time of turmoil among its Presbyterian membership.
Prior to the church being built in 1899, the population growth in Antrim was beginning to move toward’s the town’s south village, closer to the mill jobs. This was a problem for the attendees of the Presbyterian Church, which was located on Clinton Road, near the current Grange Hall.
Those who lived closer to the “downtown” of Antrim didn’t like the long buggy rides up the hill to get to church, and began to advocate for a church built closer to the south village. The Presbytery in Boston denied an application for a second church, based on Antrim’s population, and there began to be a rift in the church’s membership over whether to keep the church in its current location, or to move.
While the current structure of the Uplands Inn dates back to 1846, the land has been the site of a hotel dating back to the late 1700s.
In 1798, Zacceus Fairbanks built a two-story house on the property, which was licensed as a hotel and tavern, which was the site of dances, as well as singing and dancing lessons.
In 1846, Edward Vose acquired the building, tearing down the former hotel, and building the current structure.
The white building now known as the home of the Antrim Grange was once the town’s Meeting House.
The original town meeting building was moved from its original location to be closer to a new bypass that was built in 1822, at the bottom of Meeting House Hill Road.
The Grange, which had held meetings in town since 1883, first purchased the building in 1894. The building has hosted the Grange ever since.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.