Hearthside - The House That Love Built

Heritage crafts featured during great road fall festival Sunday, October 5th

Here's a wonderful opportunity to spend an afternoon with your family exploring history along one of America's oldest roads. On Sunday, October 5th, several historic sites along Great Road, representing over 300 years of history, will open to visitors for tours, demonstrations and displays of heritage crafts.

At Hearthside, you will find all kinds of different traditional craftsman at work, both inside and outside the house. Among the crafts featured are: hand weaving, spinning, quill writing, leather book binding, basket weaving, stained glass, a silhouette artist, rug hooking, cheese making, cooking over the open fire, and uses of herbs for culinary and medicinal purposes. Traditional music will be performed by The Little Rhody Dulcimer Players. Exhibits including a buggy and sleigh made at the nearby Moffett Mill, and a Civil War uniform and dress exhibit will be on display. Costumed guides will be on hand to provide history of Hearthside. Apple crisp, cider, harvest treats and a gift shop add to the festival atmosphere! There is an admission fee of $4.00 per person, and a $2.00 fee for children under 12 and free for children under 6.

Step inside the Hannaway Blacksmith Shop next door and watch the blacksmiths forge hot steel into implements, just like it was done in this very shop over 100 years ago.

At the Eleazer Arnold House down the street, one of the oldest houses in the state (1693), there will be demonstrations of Colonial crafts including a potter, lacemaker, horn worker, armorer, and a simpler and tape maker.

Around the corner is the Saylesville Friends Quaker Meeting House, where you can visit one of the oldest continuous meeting houses in the country. Behind it, you will find a burial ground with some of the Town's earliest settlers, including the Arnolds and Stephen Hopkins Smith, builder of Hearthside.

At the other end of Great Road , you will find North Gate on Louisquisset Pike at the corner of Wilbur Road . This 1807 building was originally used as a toll house for the Louisquisset Turnpike Company and later as the Lime Rock Grange. Today, North Gate is home to the Blackstone Valley Historical Society. On the site with many interesting exhibits is the one-room Arnold Bakery (1874) as well as the Lime Rock Volunteer Fire Station.

Along the Blackstone Canal in the Blackstone River Park in Quinnville is the Wilbur Kelly House, a small museum that brings together all the transportation stories from the time of the Blackstone Canal and the mills along the Blackstone Valley in Ashton.

The Great Road Fall Heritage Festival is a wonderful opportunity for families to experience living history while helping preserve these rare traditional crafts so that they are not lost.

Return to top