The fix is in for the stairs at West Newbury Hall.
It’s on its way for the roof at Norwich’s Beaver Meadow Union Chapel.
And the volunteers who care for each of those white clapboard gathering places are hoping they won’t need to repair anything quite as major again in the near future.
The two buildings share a profile: They’re both out in the hills, away from larger villages near the Connecticut River, and both are over 100 years old. Not surprisingly, both need work, and both have small, loyal bands of volunteers willing to pitch in.
In Norwich, leaders of the Beaver Meadow Union Chapel Association estimate that with another $1,000 in donations, they will have the $28,000 they need to replace the building’s roof. The non-denominational place of worship, built in 1915 about five miles west of downtown Norwich, is on the National Register of Historic Places, and hosts services the third Sunday of the month between April and October.
“It’s a major capital improvement,” association Treasurer Donna Wheeler said this week, adding that the leaks discovered recently are “not that extensive yet, but we know it can’t make another winter.”
In West Newbury, a corps of volunteer carpenters, painters and laborers ranging in age from 15 to 82 this week finished removing the steep concrete steps that led into the front door of the 1910-vintage community hall on Tyler Farm Road, and replacing them with a porch featuring more gently sloping stairs on either side.
The West Newbury Women’s Fellowship, part of the First Congregational Church of West Newbury, had set aside the $40,000 needed for planning, permitting and materials for the project with proceeds from several years of summer festivals and turkey suppers. The fellowship also rents the building, which started life as a Ladies Aid Hall and later served as a grange hall, for private parties, square dances, concerts and other events.
“I would say, conservatively, that it took four years from the time we realized we needed to do something about the stairs until we got all the permits and started the work,” fellowship member Catherine Kidder, whose husband, Tom, coordinated the crew and sought bids on materials, said on Thursday. “We realized it could be more cost-effective if we had volunteers working on it.”
Donna Wheeler recalled how a similar volunteer effort in the early 1980s enabled the chapel association to jack up the Norwich building and replace the Beaver Meadow chapel’s crumbling foundation. Since then, however, attendance has dwindled and times have changed.
“In the ’80s, people didn’t have the internet and all that,” Wheeler said. “We got a lot of in-kind services. I wish I could say we could do that now, on that kind of scale.”
What the association had working for it this time was support from a wide range of state and private sources. Wheeler said that Caitlin Corkins of the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development “got us off and running” by helping the association acquire $12,000 in historic preservation grants. Next came contributions of $5,000 from Dorothy Byrne of the Upper Valley’s Byrne Foundation and $2,500 from the Mascoma Savings Bank Foundation.
Additional donations came from the Norwich Women’s Club and from Christ Redeemer Church, which uses the chapel for its Christmas observances. And Plainfield auctioneer Bill Smith donated his commission from a sale of items retrieved from the chapel’s attic, where more potential problems — and potential expenses — revealed themselves after the clean-out.
“We are close to our goal but worry about the sub-roof, which is not in good shape,” Wheeler said. “We need a cushion.”
Not long after moving to West Newbury in the early 1980s, Catherine and Tom Kidder figured out that the cushion for the community hall, and the community at large, consists of longtime Women’s Fellowship members Aroline Putnam, Mitzi Queen and Phyllis Ellis, who set the example of pitching in.
“You can’t sit still when Aroline’s moving, and she’s moving all the time,” Catherine Kidder said. “With her, our whole core commitment is to create a sense of community. The hall is a terrific point to coalesce around.”
Marylou Henderson, of the women’s fellowship, said that “the construction has encompassed about 400 hours of volunteer labor over nine days.”
Donations to the Beaver Meadow chapel roofing project can be mailed to Donna Wheeler, Treasurer, Beaver Meadow Union Chapel Assocation, 3322 Beaver Meadow Road, Sharon, Vt. 05065.
For more information about West Newbury Hall, and about the stairs project, visit westnewburyhall.org/.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and at 603-727-3304.