Gate house was summer home for Methuen hat manufacturer
Methuen's Grey Court Gate House was first a farmhouse built in 1840 by William Whittier.
In 1880, Charles Tenney, who had been born on a farm in Salem, NH, bought the house and 30 acres of land. At the time he manufactured hats in a factory on the banks of the Spicket River near the Methuen falls. When he began exporting hats to Europe, Mr. Tenney relocated the company to New York City.
While Grey Court Castle was being built, the gate house served as his summer home. His additions include the tower, terra cota chimney and Victorian window sashes. The tower was particularly stylish with its roof, a double curve called an ogee. The curve is carefully repeated at the joining of tower and house, a feat requiring great skill in order to frame graceful curves with rectangular timbers.
Soon afterward, this building became the gate house to Grey Court. In that pre-telephone era, people regularly sent notes to each other and went calling. Much as today people have unlisted telephone numbers and answering machines, people then had servants to announce that they were not at home, even if they were, or had gate houses to keep the unwelcome off their property.
Today the Grey Court Gate House guards a park owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Grey Court was destroyed by fire in 1977. A local Methuen group, the Tenney Gate House Restoration Committee, hopes to restore the Gate House so it may serve as the Methuen Historical Museum and Archives. Although the house is substantial, well built of granite block, the roof is leaking and the gate house needs structural repair to make it habitable again.
3 comments:
it actually is restore now and Is a museum
I wrote the column when the Methuen historical society was beginning to work on the house, for a little publicity. I often chose a house to give the owners a little quiet support.
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