Quick History Stops: Tyringham, MA

A tiny little town with a population under five hundred residents, Tyringham has several cute quick history stops. The sunflower painted silo of Little Way Farm, while not a true history stop, set the stage for the classic and whimsical buildings in the town, including Tyringham School House & Town Offices, Union Church in Tyringham, and Santarella: Tyringham’s Gingerbread House. As a bonus fun fact, the official town website states that the town was named after wealthy Jane Tyringham, who was a cousin of Sir Francis Bernard, the royal governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1762. This makes Tyringham the only town in Massachusetts named after a woman.

Tyringham School House & Town Offices

Like many small New England towns, Tyringham has its own one-room schoolhouse built in 1877 and now serving as a town-owned building for a wide range of purposes. A school has stood on the site since 1782. I had previously visited many similar schoolhouses, including a museum in Jamestown, RI; Putterham School owned by Brookline Historical Society in MA; a building in Canterbury Shaker Village in NH; York Corner Schoolhouse owned by Old York Historical Society in ME; Grass Hill School owned by Millbury Historical Society in MA; and Lower Green Schoolhouse in Newbury, MA. This particular schoolhouse was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020.

Union Church in Tyringham

Union Church, also known as the Methodist Episcopal Society, was built in 1844 as both a center of worship and for hosting town meetings. To this day, it is the only church in the town. Unlike many little white churches in New England, the building was not built in the Federalist style but in the Greek Revival style. While the overgrown trees in front of the church obscure the view of the steeple, older images reveal that the structure is not pointed but rectangular, much like the flat tops of Ancient Greek buildings. Since 2000, the property has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Santarella: Tyringham’s Gingerbread House

In 1920, British-American sculptor Henry Hudson Kitson began creating Santarella, a bizarre but beautiful gingerbread style building. Kitson had made his name and fortune as the designer of the Minuteman in Lexington, MA (not to be confused by the statue at Minute Man National Historic Site in Concord, MA) and a representation of my ancestor Roger Conant in Salem, MA, among other statues. At the time of building the house, Kitson was a single man in his late fifties. In 1909, he had divorced his wife, equally famous sculptor Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson, who created mass produced designs like The Hiker. He would not marry again until his secret wedding to Maria Louise Hobron in 1935 at age 69.

With money to spend and no wife to appease, Kitson purchased a four-acre property with an existing farmhouse barn with the intent of turning the barn into an art studio. He added an eighty ton asphalt roof to the poor barn, along with “huge stone buttresses, stained glass windows, and gothic doorways” according to the informational sign on the property. When Kitson died twenty-seven years later in 1947, the house was owned by a series of families who used the unique space as an art gallery, museum, or wedding venue. Currently, the property is both private residence and an AirBNB. The small parking area outside the houses allows visitors to take pictures without disturbing the home owners or their guests.