GRAFTON CENTER — New Hampshire’s Land and Community Heritage Investment Program is delivering six-figure boosts of money toward protection of a large tract of open space in Grantham and toward rehabilitation of a historic meetinghouse in Grafton.
Along with announcing grants of $215,000 to preserve Grantham’s Sawyer Brook Headwaters Parcel and $150,000 to restore the Grafton Center Meetinghouse, LCHIP on Wednesday awarded $87,750 for the ongoing renovation of the Newport Opera House.
The LCHIP grant completes the effort by the town of Grantham and the Ausbon Sargent Land Preservation Trust to raise $515,000 for purchase of 386 acres around Sawyer Brook — a longtime, unofficial recreation haven for hikers, birdwatchers, horseback riders, snowshoers and snowmobilers — from Dillon Investments. The firm had bought the land from firearms mogul William Ruger Jr. and announced plans to log many of the trees.
“This is a huge deal for the town of Grantham,” said Sheridan Brown, a Grantham resident, birdwatcher and lawyer who coordinated the project for the town. “It was under threat of clear-cutting. It’s a gem of a property, and now it’s permanently protected.”
Brown, who along with town and land trust officials were recognized for their work on the project during the ceremony at the Statehouse in Concord, added that the town will use the grant to take full ownership of the Sawyer Brook headwaters parcel from The Conservation Fund and then will give a conservation easement to the Sargent land trust.
Voters at the Grantham Town Meeting this year already appropriated $250,000 toward the purchase price. Trust Executive Director Deborah Stanley said that $50,000 in private donations will go toward the balance of the transaction.
“We’re collecting on the pledges right now,” Stanley said.
LCHIP, which generates the money for preservation awards through fees on documents recorded at county registries of deeds, requires applicants to raise money on their own to match the grants. With its award, the Mascoma Valley Preservation nonprofit will move ahead in 2020 to install a new roof on the Grafton Center Meetinghouse on Route 4, restore the building’s interior and remove a non-historic spire and vinyl siding that had been installed in recent decades. In the long term, the group aims to convert it into a community gathering place.
Mascoma Valley Preservation President Andrew Cushing estimated this week that the group so far has raised $60,000, including pledges of money and in-kind materials and labor, toward saving the building that the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance identified, in 2017, among its “Seven to Save” historic properties in danger of demolition or loss. The group acquired the historic structure, built in 1797, in September, almost four years after a fire heavily damaged what was then called the Peaceful Assembly Church.
Church founder John Connell was found dead of smoke inhalation in the wreckage. He had painted the building’s outside trim purple before falling behind in property-tax payments and in upkeep of the building.
Since the purchase, Mascoma volunteers have been cleaning debris from inside and outside the building and securing it against the coming winter.
“LCHIP ranks you more favorably if your building has an imminent threat, which was certainly the case with the meetinghouse,” Cushing said. “They’re also looking for capacity to raise money and for interest in the community in saving the building. We showed that this was more than our 10 board members showing up on the weekend to do some cleanup. We’re relying on a network of dozens of people throughout the Mascoma area, from people bringing their trucks to drive to the dump to pro bono legal work.”
As part of the immediate weatherization work, volunteers in late October covered windows with plywood panels, painted in bright, quilt-like designs, which will be sold to further the long-term restoration.
“When we lit the town Christmas tree on the common the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the lights illuminated the illustrations on the side of the building,” Cushing said. “They made it look a lot more heartwarming than it did a year ago. It was another sign of what (board treasurer) Elena Bergamini always says about the project: ‘We’re going to get through this.’ ”
To learn more about the Grafton Center Meetinghouse project, visit mascomavalleypreservation.org/graftonmeetinghouse. For more information about the Sawyer Brook Headwaters preservation effort, visit ausbonsargent.org/donate/land-projects/sawyer-brook-headwaters-property.
David Corriveau can be reached at dcorriveau@vnews.com and 603 -727- 3304.
Correction
The town of Grantham will use money from a New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program grant to take full ownership of the Sawyer Brook headwaters parcel from The Conservation Fund and then will give a conservation easement to the Ausbon Sargent Land Preservation Trust. Officials from Grantham and the land trust, along with attorney Sheridan Brown of Grantham, were recognized for their work on the project during the grant announcement on Wednesday. An earlier version of this story misstated the ownership structure and incorrectly described what happened at the ceremony. Also, the spire on the Grafton Center Meetinghouse was installed by the Grafton Congregational Christian Church in the 1980s and the vinyl siding was attached in the 1990s. Stories on Oct. 27 and an earlielr version here incorrectly identified the people and timing connected with those changes.