Monadnock Ledger-Transcript – Couple dives into history of old Hancock home

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The temperature in Hancock was hovering in the vicinity of zero, but the big wooden stove in the kitchen on Connection Highway radiated warmth. 

Kate St. Cyr and Robert Amburn occasionally strolled over to open the round gap at the leading to drop in a number of logs. They described that their house is a work in progress, as it can take time to renovate an old house the way they are executing it — by by themselves and conscious of their obligation to its historical past every single action of the way.

The pair acquired their Hancock residence ideal right before the pandemic strike. The timing was perfect for them. The previous dwelling, created in 1783, desired some like, but for Amburn and St. Cyr, it was accurately what they ended up searching for. 

“We could see the possible immediately,” St. Cyr said. 

Amburn is a carpenter and St. Cyr is a textile artist with an eye for structure and aesthetic. The few is renovating the residence with each other room by place, understanding along the way and using time to research as a lot as they can about the home’s long earlier. 

“I genuinely cared about dwelling in a home with a ton of heritage,” explained St. Cyr, and after achieving out to the Hancock Historical Society and investing time functioning on and residing in the dwelling, they have been in a position to obtain information that has helped piece together parts of its story.

St. Cyr and Amburn are the 20th owners. They uncovered a document written by a earlier resident, Nettie Stearns Davis, who grew up in the residence in the late 19th century. Around 1903, she described the rooms in element in an essay for the Hancock Historical Culture.

Applying her descriptions as a guide for what the dwelling applied to glimpse like, St. Cyr and Amburn want to respect the record of the house and restore the historic things that have been changed.

“I would like previous homeowners not to be stunned,” St. Cyr reported.

While continually preserving the come to feel of an outdated property, the spaces are classy, comfortable and interesting. The rooms are uncluttered, with wood floors and Persian rugs. The home furniture is mostly acquired secondhand from Facebook Marketplace, antique stores and estate revenue. The couple has painted most of the rooms neutral off-white tones, and the range of art, plants and taxidermy animals results in an environment that includes the hints of historical past. 

A person huge clue to the house’s past is the blackened beams in the upstairs office environment area, evidence of a chimney fireplace that the couple figures should have happened sometime in the 1970s or 1980s. Although they have tried to learn more about the hearth, the city doesn’t have a record of it, and Amburn claimed the attic continue to shows the most harm.

“It changed the dwelling they had to rebuild the two chimneys,” Amburn said.

In the essay Davis penned more than 100 years in the past, she wrote, “I imagine one kettle was Brass and I can try to remember my Mother offering that a quite comprehensive cleansing when she was having all set to make a substantial batch of boiled cider sauce for winter season.”

St. Cyr and Amburn imagine they have found that kettle. Now it sits in their backyard garden, a reminder of the past.

A tiny approaches absent from the fenced-in garden is a route that passes through a segment of trees and around a stream leading to a major open area on their assets. St. Cyr and Amburn system to get sheep and let them graze there. They liked raising pigs previous 12 months, and both equally have knowledge farming. 

“We’ll be capable to see tiny sheep via the woods,” St. Cyr smiled.

At a person stage, a improvement was planned for that field, but ended up slipping by ahead of something was created. This earlier summer season, Amburn foraged for mushrooms in the woods behind that field, and they cleared all of the thorns and brush from their property and about the rock wall. 

“We always select the toughest way to do things, but I like to think it’s well worth it,” St. Cyr said back in the kitchen area as Amburn described his strategy to build reproduction 1800s two-in excess of-twos working with the first process to replace the casement windows in the area.

“Every time I do some thing with outdated glass, I hold it,” he stated.

St. Cyr said, “A great deal of enjoy poured in. I am pretty fortunate to be completely obsessed with my dwelling.”

It is uncomplicated to miss the wishbone lines up together a beam on the kitchen ceiling, but they suit proper in.

“We want to have a farm and elevate our young children the way we were being raised,” St. Cyr and Amburn said as they smiled at every single other. “We have been each lifted in residences truly comparable to this.”

St. Cyr and Amburn want to know much more about their home’s heritage. If everyone has images of the residence at 48 Url Road or understanding of the home, St. Cyr can be contacted at [email protected]



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