Click on this link if you’d like to read an essay I wrote about this house for Literary Hub
The House
Revolutionary war General Ephraim Hinman, built this iconic Litchfield County house in 1784 on a corner lot in the center of town. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this two-story home, 3,672 square foot home with 9 foot ceilings throughout, contains nine rooms, four of which are bedrooms, two full baths and one half bath. There is also a library with built-ins, a dining room, a sitting room, which can all be arranged to your liking, and all contain original or restored (in the 1930s) dentil & moldings. There are four working fireplaces, and the center hall is covered in early 20th century hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper. The kitchen is vast, with a custom soapstone sink, Liebherr refrigerator, and a French CornuFe stove, and includes a light-filled, roomy sitting area and a sizable mudroom.
Recent improvements include: restored scullery kitchen with under-floor radiant heat, cedar shake roof w/40 yr. guarantee, new furnace system, water filtration and softener system, French drains outside house perimeter and in basement, and a (local) granite patio. The entire outside of the house has alsorecently been painted.
According to “A Cultural History and Walking Tour of Roxbury’s Historic District”, the home features a center hall and twin interior chimneys, and the main entrance, centered by a five bay facade, is sheltered by a later Federal Revival portico topped by a gabled roof and embellished with medallions on the open rake. The front door is flanked by 4-over-4 sidelights and surmounted by a blind fan with a key block.
The house has not been on the market for decades. We purchased it from the estate of the previous owner.
A photo of the jacuzzi in the kitchen and what the rest of the kitchen looked like before restoration.
The Town
Incorporated in 1796, Roxbury, Connecticut is located in the northwest corner of Connecticut in Litchfield County. Spread over 26-square miles, our rural town of 2,150 contains historic sites and architecture, as well as rural ambience, many working farms, and friendly neighbors. In the western part of town, the Shepaug River flows in a southerly direction, cutting a narrow valley through hills on either side.
Besides its farming and mining heritage, a solid middle class, second home owners, Roxbury has also been a magnet for creative folks like Stephen Sondheim, Alexander Calder, Daniel Day-Lewis, Arthur Miller, A.R. Gurney, Gay Talese, and many more artists, writers, and those working in creative fields and industries.
Roxbury has a reputation for providing excellent municipal services, cultural, educational, and recreational opportunities, the annual Tractor Parade, an annual Pickin’ and Fiddlin’ competition, a very active Land Trust that maintains acres and acres of preserves. We also have tennis courts (refurbished in 2024), parks, and one of the lowest tax rates in the state. It is also within a 1.5-2 hour drive of Providence, Boston, and New York City. Our library, The Minor Memorial Library, just down the street from the house, hosts dozens and dozens of events, concerts, and art openings.
Booth Free School, Roxbury’s elementary school, was just voted one of three best public elementary school in Connecticut by US News and World Reports.
Tennis? Less than a city block from our house are the newly renovated and often empty town tennis courts.
The Gardens and Yard
After 10 years of planting and weeding, the flower gardens have a soft wildness, featuring forget-met-nots, native foxglove, lily of the valley, creeping thyme, baptisia, gaillardia, lamium, daphne, many kinds and colors of lilies and iris, euphoria, bee balm, primrose, old roses, clethora, astilbe, Japanese painted ferns, wild Maine lupines grown from seed, clary sage, hellebore, shasta and montauk daisies, dozens of peonies, carnival variegated glory bower, yarrow, epicedium, coral bells, wikistronmia trichotoma, old hollyhock, catmint, echinacea, lamb’s ear, phlox, ladies mantle, lavender, lemon balm, bleeding hearts, ajuca, coreopsis, sedum, many kinds of asters, day lilies, faux sunflower and much much more as well as various hydrangeas, old apple trees, a peach tree, chestnut trees, a witch hazel tree, dozens of lilac trees, quince trees, and forsythia lining the stone walls. So. Much. More. We also cleared an area where we used to have 45 rows of vegetables and it remains fenced in by cedar.
The chestnut floor attic and workshop/basement cover the entire footprint of the house. The 2-car garage is charming, and its loft could easily be converted into a guest space or work studio.
The yard is about 4.5 acres with drystone walls, wildflowers, a meadow, and a boccicourt surrounded by heirloom apple trees.
We do not have a pool but there are plenty of places to build one, however, there are also nearby rivers and streams to swim in. You can also do laps at the high school, which offers the school pool to the public in the morning for this purpose.
We were lucky enough to have the house and gardens featured in a campaign by PLAIN GOODS, a beautiful store in New Preston, CT owned and operated by my good friends, Andrew Fry and Michael Deperno, who I met the day of the photo shoot itself. Pictures courtesy of Plain Goods from their Spring/Summer 2019 campaign. Photos by Jeff Bark.
More photos below
