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| A workman removes an old window from Windham Hill Chruch which will now be used for a new wedding barn on the grounds of the Parson Smith House in Windham. A total of five of the six windows being replaced at the church will be reused at the new wedding barn. PHOTO BY LINDA GRIFFIN |
By Ed Pierce
Nothing lasts
forever, but everybody benefits when an attempt is made to see the lasting beauty
of older items. That’s the premise behind an effort to reuse some old windows
being replaced by Windham Hill Church in a contemporary setting.
Last week the
church members announced that they were replacing six large old wooden windows
with new metal ones with screens. Upon hearing that news, Broker Linda Griffin
of Pleasant Hill Properties in Windham launched an initiative to try and salvage
the windows.
Griffin said
Holly Dickinson and Leith Smith of Windham responded and said they could use
them in the wedding barn they are building on the grounds of the Parson Smith
House on the River Road in South Windham.
“How
exciting and how appropriate as Parson Smith was our second settled minister in
Windham,” Griffin said. “He preached at two churches that were started inside
the fort in front of his house, so he could walk to work.”
According to
Griffin, the Rev. Don and Elaine Dickinson bought the circa-1764 Parson Smith
House with a lot of the original acres years ago.
She said
that the third church built locally was called the corner church and was built
nearby the Parson Smith House and then the fourth church, the Windham Hill
Church, was built about 1839 on the Windham Center Road and is now the oldest existing
church in Windham.
“When the
state held the archeological dig a few years ago at the top of the hill under
the River Road, the head archeologist Leith Smith met the Dickinson’s daughter
Holly and the rest is history,” Griffin said.
Two years
ago, a Windham home and barn on Route 302 near Highland Lake owned by the
grandparents of Windham Historical Society member Linda Lunt was being
demolished and Dickinson and Smith hired Ed Sommers, a barn wright from
Bridgton, to take the barn down and moved the pieces to a neighbor’s barn on
the River Road so they could work on repairs.
The barn is now
being moved to the fields beside the Parson Smith House on the River
Road.
Years ago
there had been two large cattle barns in that spot and the old well with the
granite well cap stone is still in place and there is still water in the well,
Griffin said.
“Holly and
Leith want to create a wedding venue there in this newly rebuilt barn,” she
said. “Ed Sommers spent two years repairing and restoring the timbers and
work in the new location has begun recently on the sills and
flooring. Holly and Leith were pleased to have five of the old windows
with the original wavy glass for their wedding barn.”
Smith
believes that the six windows from the Windham Hill Church are original as the
muntins, or the windows’ glaze bars, have a similar profile to windows in 1839
when that church was built. There is a lot of the original wavy glass
still in place.
“Many local
people had already spoken for the windows as they wanted the windows for
woodworking projects using the wavy glass but when they heard the windows were
going to the Parson Smith property they let Holly and Leith have five of them.”
The large
old windows also come with large storm windows, Griffin said.
“I did call
Marc Bagala who has a business in Westbrook restoring old windows and his
office person said he would buy the old wavy glass but had no calls for such
large old windows.”
Windham Hill
Church now has new metal windows that will not need painting and they also have
window screens.
“A huge thank
you to Rolf Dries and his crew of Jim Hanscom and Allen Greenacer who helped
remove the old windows,” Griffin said. <
