Preston is ready to show off the Long Society Meeting House
Early town building went through five years of renovation work
Preston — The Preston Historical Society is ready to say “thank you” and show off five years of work to save the 1817 Long Society Meeting House, a legacy of the the town’s settlement, and ensure it remains a town landmark for future generations.
The historical society will host an open house at 1 p.m. Oct. 13 at the freshly painted house at the western edge of town.
The building is one of just a few broad board meetinghouses remaining in New England. It replaced the original 1726 meetinghouse built by the original settlers of Long Society or East Norwich. Construction started in 1817 and was completed about a year later. The building is surrounded on three sides by a cemetery containing graves of many of those original settlers.
The building had suffered from years of lack of maintenance as the previous caretakers, the Second Ecclesiastical Society, struggled with a lack of members and funding and did not have nonprofit status to seek grants.
With help from the town, the Preston Historical Society obtained clear title to the property in May 2014 and immediately began fundraising. The first grant from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation provided the daunting assessment that the building needed an estimated $180,000 of work to restore the rotted foundation, replace the sagging, leaking windows, shore up support beams, paint the exterior and interior and do landscaping work to improve access.
Historical Society President Linda Christensen told The Day at the outset that the society would go for “small pieces” at a time, pursuing small grants to tackle the top priority projects one at a time.
Mike Clancy and Mary Jo Nugent, society members and coordinators of Sunday’s open house event, said last week, that plan has worked. The society has raised and spent $70,000
to $80,000 in grants and donations — not including the many hours of volunteer labor — for high priority projects of such as securing the structure and improving access so that small events, such as weddings, concerts and lectures, could be held there.
“Although we’ve come a long way,” Clancy said, “we’ve got a long way to go. We’ve done a lot on the outside.”
The project started with an archaeological dig around the foundation in the spring of 2015 before work began to jack up the building to repair the foundation and redirect water that had been pooling in one corner. The dig yielded a 1784 silver Spanish coin, a 1904 political campaign button and two Paleoindian spear points estimated at about 4,500 years old.
The Mohegan tribe donated $10,000 which was used to replace the windows with replica antique glass. Other grants came from local banks, the 1772 Foundation, which funds historic preservation projects and numerous donations from local groups and individuals.
Beneath the building, the main carrying beam was found to have extensive termite damage. Crews pulled up the historic flooring and poured 14 gallons of epoxy into the hole. They also poured concrete pilings beneath the interior wooden vertical support columns. The roof was replaced, and the exterior painted in bright white.
Rotting trees and overgrown brush were cleared from the yard and historic cemetery that surrounds the building on three sides, some stones just a few feet from the foundation. One tree had been used by squirrels as a jumping off point to reach the building and get inside through holes, Clancy said.
Out front, the society obtained large granite slabs from the town’s ongoing cleanup of the former Norwich Hospital property and created front steps and a walkway with paving bricks. Previously, visitors climbed the uneven, steep ground to the front entrance. To the right, another new path leads to a new flagpole adorned with the 13-star socalled Betsy Ross flag.
The “big next project” will be renovating the interior, Clancy said. The ceiling is marked with water stains, modern patches that cover holes and some sagging that reveals support beams. The interior walls haven’t been painted since 1965, Nugent said.
An antique stove inside is just for show, Nugent said. The building will remain unheated and without water or electricity, limiting it to three-season use for short events, as there is no bathroom.
“We are the owners and caretakers of this building,” Clancy said, “but we consider this a town asset. We’d like it to be used more.”