The first time Rob and Patty Magie saw the Bradford Mill property on Tannery Hill Road in Hancock, Patty “could only stay in the house for 10 minutes.”
“It was a total mess. It needed a lot of work,” Patty said.
“No one had lived here for eight years, but there was still food in the oven,” Rob said.
The Bradford Mill is the only property in Hancock listed on the NH state register of historic places.
“Most of Hancock village is on the National Register, but for some reason, this is the only property listed on the state register,” Rob said.
The property features a Greek Revival farmhouse built in 1900, a restored cottage that was originally the Coopers’ barn, and a water-powered mill building dating to 1798. It also includes a three-acre mill pond, a stretch of Ferguson Brook, and 23 acres of land.
During high water, the Magies have kayaked all the way from Ferguson Brook to the Contoocook River and Powdermill Pond.
“We had kayaks on the pond, we fished, there was paddleboarding, and lots of picnics,” Patty said. “The summer of COVID, we ate outside by the pond almost every night.”
Patty admits “there was not a lot of swimming in the pond” due to the large snapping turtle in residence.
“She thinks she owns the pond,” Patty said. “The water is very clean; it’s so clear you can see the bottom, but even our dogs don’t want to swim when the turtle is there. She hangs out on the rock in the middle of the pond. ”
The Magies, who are American but had been living in London for 25 years before moving to Hancock, started to look for a home in U.S. after both their children moved back to the country.
“Our daughter sent us a ‘Buzzfeed’ article about the ten quaintest towns in New England, and that’s how we found Hancock,” Rob said. “We had just left our house in London, and we were spending our days looking at property online. We looked at Sugar Hill and other towns on the list, and then we found this place.”
The Magies first saw the property in January 2014. While the buildings needed a huge amount of work, the couple was undaunted. Rob, an architect, had deep experience in renovating old properties.
“We have a house in Italy that was basically just walls when we bought it, ” Patty said. “It didn’t have a roof. It was kind of like a pile of rubble.”
While Patty could only stand a brief tour of the neglected farmhouse on that first visit, Rob knew the house had “good bones.”
“We considered tearing the house down, but it was worth saving,” Rob said. “We had done much heavier lifting in terms of restoration with the Italian property.”
For over a hundred years, the Bradford Mill was a working sawmill. Apple barrels for many Hancock farms were created at the mill, which had several different owners before being purchased by George Johnson in 1899. Johnson refurbished the large mill building and dam, added the smaller Coopers’ barn, and built the farmhouse for his family.
In 1921, Fred Johnson, George’s son, inherited the property. Fred Johnson, who raised a family of eight children on the property, continued to run the mill and produce wood products until 1958.
In 1958, the mill complex was purchased by Albert Daloz, who operated the property as a “hobby mill” until his death in 1991. Several generations of the Daloz family, who were well known in Hancock for founding one the region’s first CSA’s and selling organic vegetables at the Hancock farmers market, lived at the property.
Patty says there were many remnants of the Daloz family’s gardening legacy.
“We took so many pots and planters and things like that to the dump,” Patty said.
Rob Magie points out that what is now the property’s driveway still has a double yellow line down the middle of it, as the driveway was the original Route 202/123, which was rerouted to the east in 1959. The driveway dips down past the house, ending at a massive boulder and a now-closed WPA bridge.
“Apparently, it was a very dangerous corner, and there were a lot of accidents at that boulder,” Patty said.
After some back and forth, including inquiries into the condition of the mill pond dam, the Magies finally purchased the property in summer 2014. They ended up doing extensive repairs to the dam on Ferguson Brook, which had been neglected over the years. The house also required environmental mitigation, as the basement had high levels of black mold.
The house, which is now a warm off-white, was battleship gray when the Magies first saw it.
“It was so ugly, and inside, it was all avocado green paint. Even the fireplace surrounds, the original carving, had been painted avocado green. Our contractors scraped it all off, and we saved the original woodwork,” Rob said.
From summer through Christmas 2014, Rob — who served as both architect and general contractor — managed the project remotely from the couple’s home in Italy, flying back to New Hampshire once a month to check on progress.
“I promised my bride we would be in by Christmas,” Magie said. “At one point, there were 42 vans or pick up trucks in the driveway.”
“We were here at Thanksgiving and I thought, there is no way, this is going to happen, but Christmas Day 2014 was our first meal in the house, with all our family here,” Patty said.
The Magies “gutted the house to the bare bones,” while salvaging anything they could from the original home.
“We put in geothermal, LED lighting, insulation, all new windows, everything we could do to make it energy efficient,” Rob said.
The farmhouse has five bedrooms, including a main bedroom in the third floor attic. The Magies added a modern garage and outdoor space, including a deck and patios overlooking the water. The original house had a few quirky surprises, including a large, open-top terrarium in a space that is now a comfortable window seat.
“It was like a greenhouse, with an open top,” Patty said.
“It was a plumbed zinc pan, and they grew plants in it,” Rob said.
Upstairs, one of the bathrooms had a 4-foot stainless steel bathtub.
“There was no obvious way to get into it,” Rob said.
Patty recalls that the floors throughout the house “were unidentifiable as wood floors.”
“The house had the orginal white oak floors from 1900, and they were pitch black when we bought it. They looked like wood that had been sitting outside for years, but then the floor refinisher started scraping it and said he could save it. It is amazing they were able to bring them back from the dead,” Patty said.
An annex in the back of the house had tiles which “broke every time you walked across it.”
“Someone had put tile on a floor that was not strong enough to support tile,” Rob said.
The couple also did extensive cleanup on the grounds, removing 700 rubber tires from the woods. In the old mill building on the pond, they discovered a collection of antique woodworking machines, many of which were original to the building. The coffee table in the living room is constructed from a 52-inch head saw blade found in the mill.
The Magies did not change the floor plan of the farmhouse much, other than to expand the garage and repair the annex.
The Coopers’ barn next to the Bradford Mill was, in Rob’s words, “an even worse disaster than the house.” In 2015, the couple tore it down and rebuilt it as a 950-square-foot guest cottage. Under New Hampshire shoreline regulations, the new structure had to stay within the original footprint — but it stands 9 feet taller than the old barn.
“That was our ‘contamination cottage’ during COVID, so our family could come and stay, and now it’s also Rob’s office,” Patty said.
Patty says the view over the pond may be the most special aspect of the property. The couple have seen deer, turkey, bears, bobcats, foxes, and even a moose wander through, and the beavers in the pond make regular appearances.
“Every day the scene changes between the water and the light, the wildlife, it’s just beautiful,” Patty said.
After 12 years and many happy memories, the Magies are downsizing, and a new family will be moving into the Bradford Mill property. The Magies plan to stay in the region, and are currently looking for land to design a new home.
“We just love this region,” Patty said. “This is home.”
