Issues → March/April 2009 → Home & Garden →
House for Sale: Harrisville, NH
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After presenting our still-warm blueberry muffins, we sat down in the "great room" with owner Lida Stinchfield, a California girl, born into a military family, who grew up living in various Navy posts all over the world, but who spent time summers in a cottage on Harrisville Pond. In 1974, she decided to live in the town where she'd spent those childhood summers. So when the Lovell Harris House came on the market that year, she purchased it and then spent the next three years in an extensive restoration process.
"It was a wreck," she told us as we munched muffins and leafed through a photo album showing the work--tearing out walls, etc.--being done at that time. (Yes, it was a wreck.) In fact, the great room where we were that morning--with its high ceilings, loft area, woodstove, and glass doors opening out to the wraparound porch overlooking fields, an orchard, and, of course, Mount Monadnock--was once where the "two-holer" was located. In other words, when Lida took the place over from the previous owners--two elderly brothers who slept in a sort of shed area out back--there wasn't even any indoor plumbing.
Well, today the home is a veritable show house. Besides the 18x28-foot great room, there's a living room with wide-pine-board floors, a dining room (with original built-in cupboards) off the modern kitchen, and a corner master bedroom on the second floor, as well as three other bedrooms, a sewing room, two and a half bathrooms, five chimney holes for stoves, a magnificent fieldstone cellar, and even a studio/apartment/office suite with kitchen, bath, and separate entrance. On the practical side, there's an oil-fired three-zone furnace, a well-maintained septic system, excellent water from a drilled well, all new wiring throughout, and a barn built in 1980 with enough space for four cars, a workshop, and extensive storage. We particularly loved the curved wall in the entryway. Why curved? Well, back in the old days, a curved wall made it easier to carry out a casket.
"I've always felt like a caretaker here rather than an owner," said Lida at one point in our conversation. "Still, I've raised my children here..." She paused and looked out toward the mountain. "I really don't know how I'm going to feel without it."
Now that her two children are adults and out on their own, though, it's more house than she needs. With laptop in tow, Lida would like to travel while still maintaining her job with Helium.com, a Web site for writers and publishers. And she plans to spend summers at that family cottage on nearby Harrisville Pond. "I'll never leave Harrisville," she smiled. We're sure that whoever becomes the next "caretaker" of the Lovell Harris House will soon feel the very same way.
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For details, contact Lida Stinchfield at 603-827-3004 or 603-398-5365, or by e-mail at: lovellharrishouse@gmail.com
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Read more about the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire and some Yankee "Classics" about Mt. Monadnock.
View photos from the driving tour of the Monadnock Region.
Reader Comments
Comment from Chris Wentworth on March 5, 2009
Makes me wish I'd won Powerball and could have a home in NH again. I'd still spend winters here in Tennessee.
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