Town Hall
The Town Hall is Lyndeborough's third completed hall, and the second to occupy a site in the Historic District. (The town's second Town Hall, a two-story, 50-by-40-foot (15 by 12 m) meetinghouse, occupied roughly the same site from c. 1769 until 1845.) The current hall is a 1+1⁄2-story Greek Revival building, constructed in 1845-46 as a 35-by-40-foot (11 by 12 m) building with a meeting hall and one anteroom at the southeast corner. In 1883, the town significantly enlarged the building by removing the west wall and adding a 12.5-foot-deep (3.8 m) addition to the back of the building and installing partitions to create the northeast anteroom (now used as a kitchen)and a small entry foyer.
In 1890, apparently at the urging of and with the help of the Pinnacle Grange (the local chapter of The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry), the town increased the pitch of the roof, thereby adding space in the attic for dinners and other functions, and added an ell to the southwest corner. At this time a metal roof was added to the building, though it was removed in 1919. A metal ceiling was installed in the meeting room in 1913, an Arts-and-Crafts-style stage sometime between 1913 and 1919, and a second chimney behind the stage in 1920. (The piano now sitting against the stage wall dates from 1919.) A storage area was added to the back of the building in 1913. The attic was remodeled in 1934, and electricity was installed in the building in 1937. Since 1975, the building has appeared on Lyndeborough's unofficial town seal.
Roads and stone walls
Three roads pass through the Historic District: Center Road, which is a paved class-IV (state-maintained) road; Stone Bridge Road, which is an unpaved class-VI (unmaintained town) road; and an unnamed class-VI right-of-way connecting Center Road to a lower section of Stone Bridge Road. Center Road was created as a two-rod (33-foot) right-of-way sometime before 1770, and was widened to three rods (50 feet) as part of a project to create a road across Hillsborough County in 1800-1804. The right-of-way was widened in 1840 between New Road and Stone Bridge Road because of problems relating to blowing snow. The original section of Center Road, which ran much closer to the Old Town Hall, Town Pound, Congregational Church, and Congregational Parsonage, was not discontinued, but generally fell into disuse as a travelled road after 1840. It is now part of the town common.
Stone Bridge Road is a two-rod (33-foot) right-of-way that was constructed in 1770 to connect Lyndeborough Center (and the meetinghouse) to western Lyndeborough. The road connected to Putnam Hill Road, which allowed travel from the Town Hall to the site of the first town meetinghouse, into South Lyndeborough and through what later became the South Lyndeborough Village Common, and along Citizens' Hall Road and Pettingill Hill Road before veering southward into Wilton.
The unnamed class-VI road appears as a road on an 1858 map of Hillsborough County, but like Stone Bridge Road, fell into disuse by 1892 (though it was never discontinued, and thus legally is still a public right-of-way). Under New Hampshire law it is a prescriptive road, created through "adverse possession" (continuous public use) over a 20-year period prior to January 1, 1968. Thus, the width of the right-of-way is legally undetermined, but is assumed to be two rods.
The stone walls behind the Town Pound, Town Hall, and former Town Barn date from about 1800. The stone wall along the east side of Center Road dates from 1840, when the road was moved to its current position.
Town Common
The Town Common between the current Town Hall and Congregational Church, and which runs in front of the church and Town Pound, was created in 1840 when Center Road was moved to its current location east of the original right-of-way. The right-of-way over the common was never discontinued, giving the town the right to use the common space for public purposes.
However, the remainder of the land around the Town Hall has been referred to as the "Common" since at least 1770, during construction of the original meetinghouse at this site. Originally the common extended from what today is the north side of the Town Pound to the north side of the Center Cemetery. (The cemetery was added around 1800.) However, the town sold a small portion of the common adjacent to the cemetery's north side in 1817 to pay for repairs to the original meetinghouse. Today that land—approximately one acre in area—is a privately owned apple orchard. Meanwhile, the area west of the meetinghouse became private property at an undetermined time in the 19th century, but was donated back to the town in 2001.
In 1940 the town added a flagpole to the common. The current fiberglass pole which replaced it dates from approximately 1999.
Lyndeborough is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,702 at the 2020 census.
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