DORCHESTER — The tiny church on Route 118 in Dorchester can be easy to miss.
It’s located on a windy state road that many use as a pass-through from the Mascoma Valley to Plymouth, N.H. And it’s fallen into disrepair, its white paint not as bright as it used to be.
Mascoma Valley Preservation, a nonprofit organization that works to save and preserve historic buildings in the five-town region, purchased the chapel in 2021 and has slowly started to renovate it.
Mascoma Valley Preservation’s efforts received a boost in December when it was awarded an $88,000 grant from New Hampshire’s Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, known as LCHIP, to put toward repairing the structure’s foundation, drainage and bell tower roof, Mascoma Valley Preservation board member Andrew Cushing said.
The nonprofit will need to raise an additional $88,000 in matching funds and complete the repairs by 2027.
“I’ve been so worried it would just sit and disappear so I’m so glad it’s being saved,” said Liz Houghton, president of the Dorchester Historical Society. “The whole town really wanted to see it rescued.”
The chapel is located in an area of town known as Cheever Four Corners. The town hall — which was a one-room schoolhouse until it closed in the mid-1960s when Dorchester joined the Mascoma Valley Regional School District — is nearby.
The chapel was built in 1905 by the American Sunday School Association and was originally named the Cheever Union Sunday School. In the century since, it has been used by different church congregations and has been vacant for a few years.
Houghton remembers when the small chapel, which can comfortably seat around 20 people, was used to host weddings. She was saddened when the building began to fall into disrepair.
“It would be nice to have a church again in town, especially if it was nondenominational so anyone could use it,” Houghton said.
Discussions about how the building can be used in the future have been put on pause as Mascoma Valley Preservation addresses its structural issues, Cushing said.
“We want to have conversations with the community, but we also need to figure out a way to ideally make it self-sustaining,” Cushing said. “Realistically, a church congregation is not the answer, but we’re open to suggestions.”
Some notable improvements have been made so far. In 2024, volunteers cleared out brush and cut down trees that were close to the church and had potential to damage it, according to a timeline posted on the nonprofit’s website.
This summer, Corinth stained glass artist Kathy Chapman repaired its stained glass window. It will be reinstalled after the chapel’s renovations are completed.
“That window is just absolutely precious,” Houghton said.
The organization also needs to raise additional money to update the chapel’s heating and electrical systems. It also needs to do work on a septic system and well, Cushing said. Those projects are separate from the LCHIP grant the organization was awarded and the final estimates are still being worked out.
The entire project will be funded by grants and private donations, Cushing said.