The barn at 3 North Bigelow Road is one of the town’s most impressive. An enormous building, it boasts everything New England barns are known for – the traditional board-and-batten siding, a magnificent fieldstone foundation, small windows – more than thirty of them, a root cellar. Built into an embankment, the basement is fortified with stone walls and supported with massive stone pillars, solid columns of granite. The ceiling of the cellar exposes the floor of the barn – enormous beams of rough-hewn lumber, some with the visible nubs of branches. According to current owner John Yanouzas, a man interested in the barn stopped to see it once and, examining the timber underneath assessed that, because of the way it was cut and the saw that was used, the barn was probably built about 1890. Originally it was a cow barn. There were holes in the floor for the manure to fall through to the earthen lower level, but at some point it was replaced with the wide floor boards that are there now. A center hall is lined with what would have been stanchions on the first floor, hay lofts above, well lit with the several windows. Though the barn hasn’t been used for many years, the Yanouzases have kept it in excellent condition, making repairs as necessary and preserving its overall integrity.
Although the current barn may be of late 19th century origin, the property does have a long history. From the search of records from the Town of Windham, of which this property was a part of prior to the establishment of the Town of Hampton in 1786, a house owned by Zebadiah Farnum had existed as early as 1740. A map developed by Jonathan Clark dated 1809 in the Town of Hampton’s records shows this area as part of a continuous property extending up to Main Street and owned by Thomas Stedman. In 1847 Andrew Litchfield purchased 37 acres of land with no house or barn mentioned. However, three years later in 1850 Mr. Litchfield sold the property to James Holt and the transaction indicates a house, two barns and a harness shop.
The surroundings are also notable. The town’s “hearse shed” is located in the shadow of the barn, though it belongs with the adjoining property owned by Everett Hyde, who is working toward researching the “hearse shed” and promises to share the information he obtains with the Gazette. Everett believes the small building was initially used to house the Betterment Society’s fire wagon that predated the Fire Department’s American LaFrance. There’s a lot of mystery to sort through on this one, intensified with its most recent use.
There is far more documentation associated with Bigelow Pond which once sprawled across the acreage at the rear of the property. Due to its proximity to the pond, the barn reportedly served as an ice house for the chunks harvested there in the winter. It was also a popular place for skating, and swimming in the summer for local children and the “summer people” who vacationed in our village and walked from Hampton Hill into the valley, a trail that was without the thick vegetation that grows there now. That Bigelow Pond was a casualty of the Hurricane of ’38 is a “Rural Legend”; the dam was actually breached a bit later. Testaments to recreational life at Bigelow Pond are aplenty.
There weren’t a lot of kids in our neighborhood, only Viola and Margaret Hawkes, Marjorie Keach and the Vargas kids. There were lots of them, but they worked hard on the farm and didn’t play much. But Bigelow Pond was across the street and everyone came swimming. We’d gather in the mornings and swim all day all summer long. Some picnicked there. At the end of the day, they would go to my house and change into dry clothes. There was a sand bar out a ways and the big kids taught you how to swim by taking you out and leaving you and making us swim back. We learned to doggie-paddle that way. We weren’t in danger though; they were right there. We went ice skating there in the winter. We walked across thin ice fast, and skimmed the younger kids across. There was an ice skating cove where it was thick. My dad cut ice for the ice house that was there, and my mom pushed us on a sled to watch.
Jane Marrotte
From “Hampton Remembers”
Ice skating at Bigelow, that was rare fun! You see they cut over quite a place. They hated to cut ice when there was snow on it ‘cause they had to clean it off so they always cut in pretty good skatin’ weather. They waited till the ice was at least eight inches thick and then they cut the cakes. In a day they’d be cutting out a place about probably sixty feet by forty and overnight it would freeze, a kinda thin layer of ice. So the next day you’d go skatin’ down there…So you’d test the ice and everybody’d start goin’. Well you’d go fast enough so you could go across this thin place and of course the ice would sag and you’d have to have enough momentum to carry you to the other side. So you’d keep goin’ slower and slower until somebody’d go Crunch! right through that time. The deal was how slow can you go across there and still make it. They would sometimes cut the ice further out but you never fooled around where it was deep. Within fifteen feet or so of shore, that’d be the only place you’d fool around and there the water probably was three and a half feet and the mud was another two… You’d get out and run for Hugheses’ house. And you were frozen stiff before you could get there, the clothes and everything…While you stayed in the water it would be all right but when you got out you got so you couldn’t even run. Y’know your boots filled up, your shoes…that was entertainment! …The other thing we used to do on Sundays was an all day skatin’ affair and that was the whole family. We went to church and afterwards you skated. That’d be your father and your mother and not only this family but probably’d be fifty there, be like an all day picnic. You skated, played tag, skated and ate and talked. They’d chop a hole in the ice, have a bonfire, you’d cook your meal. The hole was maybe just five or six inches…you just couldn’t build a fire on ice level – it’d just blow off, see…We used to cut the ice down there at Bigelow…They would cut the cakes…They could cut faster than you could haul so of course you’d haul with a team of horses, a wagon or a sled and everybody else would be hauling, too. And they’d fish ‘em out and have ‘em set up there and you’d keep tally how many you needed and before you got done you’d pay ‘em. They didn’t cut just for you. Everybody of course that sold milk had to have ice. They took the teams out onto the ice, pretty far out there ‘cause those saws go kinda deep.
George Fuller
You had to have a real clean pond for ice, not a shallow swampy place.
Gertrude Pearl
Up at the head there of Bigelow Pond I used to go swimming every day. And I went in all winter one year. But I didn’t go when the wind was blowing. Well, I certainly enjoyed it! And if I felt a cold coming on, it would kill it every time. I had to cut through a lot of ice sometimes. But there was only one time I felt a little cool. ‘Course you’d get in, get wet, lather up, get in and soak off – and it wasn’t as bad as taking sponge baths in a cold room in cold water ‘cause of course you kept moving.
Harold Stone