Purple Martin House
This structure is a Purple Martin birdhouse styled to look like a church. It is marked on the inside with the date 1936, the year in which it was built, though we do not know who built it. Originally, the house sat perched upon a pole in the field of the Wentworth house on Wentworth Hill. As you can see in the photograph, it was a very tall pole, possibly twenty feet high.
The Purple Martins can be seen happily fluttering around their houses in the photo as they prefer to live high above the ground in open spaces away from trees or structures. The fields on Wentworth Hill were an ideal habitat.
At the time this house was built and the photo taken, there were over twenty colonies of Purple Martins in the State of New Hampshire. Unfortunately, by the end of the 20th century, there were only three or four, mostly near the seacoast.
There have not been Purple Martins in Sandwich or the Lakes Region for many years; therefore, it is no surprise this house was taken down from its pole and put away. For many years it sat in a barn at Chestnut Manor, now the Isaac Adams Homestead, gathering dust until Jill Emerson Rawson donated the house to the Historical Society. Trustee Ben Bullard took the house to his workshop and beautifully restored it.
The Purple Martins can be seen happily fluttering around their houses in the photo as they prefer to live high above the ground in open spaces away from trees or structures. The fields on Wentworth Hill were an ideal habitat.
At the time this house was built and the photo taken, there were over twenty colonies of Purple Martins in the State of New Hampshire. Unfortunately, by the end of the 20th century, there were only three or four, mostly near the seacoast.
There have not been Purple Martins in Sandwich or the Lakes Region for many years; therefore, it is no surprise this house was taken down from its pole and put away. For many years it sat in a barn at Chestnut Manor, now the Isaac Adams Homestead, gathering dust until Jill Emerson Rawson donated the house to the Historical Society. Trustee Ben Bullard took the house to his workshop and beautifully restored it.