By Hilary Woodward
“I like the chimney you bought with a building attached.”
Those words were the first opinion offered by my mother regarding the house my husband, Eric, and I had just purchased north of Southampton Village. It was 1983, and we were newly married.
Months before, we realized we were growing out of the small cottage we owned near Main Street in the village. It was the perfect size for a young couple, but now we were ready to build a family.
When Eric and I met, I was aimed out of town to move to Northern California, but my attraction to him destined me to stay in Southampton. This piece of land up on the edge of the woods was as far away as I would get from my origins on North Main Street in the village.
That tumble-down “mess” was to become our home. We were proudly showing it off, and, clearly, it did need work.
The real estate agent was brilliant to show it to us. It had been on and off the market for quite some time waiting for us to take it on. I was quite familiar with and fond of the upscale yet unshowy neighborhood. Several homes were summer residences, the owners of which could not board their horses in the village.
Coincidently, my best friend from junior high school grew up across the road. Her family had horses and, at age 11, I was madly into horses. For Christmas, each of my preteen years, my parents gave me riding lessons with my friend’s mother. We trotted on trails in the woodlands, which extended north from this same place, our future home.
The property, like the dwelling, was unkempt, to put it lightly. An enormous grassy meadow of oak trees, dotted with the occasional evergreen, marched in stillness uphill away from a tremendous stand of beech trees at the entrance.
We drove up the circular sand driveway. At the top, a massive chimney of concrete towered skyward. Attached to it was a small, worn-down wooden camp-like building. Its large casement windows added an elegant final touch to this unique house showing.
As we got out of the car, the agent pointed north to the woods, part of the 5-acre property. We spotted a small pond just downhill from the back of the house. How exciting! — a private pond.
No one had cared for the property in years. It was wild and free. We were to discover rare lady slippers and wild blueberry bushes in abundance on the front meadow. The oak trees sheltered squirrels and birds. And the pond, below in the woods, was the icing on the cake.
I had grown up on a sizable property in the village that was maintained in perfect order by both my parents, who loved gardening. My father was somewhat fervent when it came to flawless lawns. The grass was always perfect. In their later years, their garden was featured regularly on garden tours. Eric’s childhood home was also well tended by his mother.
This property was the antithesis of that ideal.
Both sets of our parents wondered if we were crazy. Perhaps a latent, unpracticed rebelliousness toward their desire for perfection was playing itself out. But, no matter, Eric and I had fallen hard for this wild mess.
The dwelling on this property was clearly the immediate challenge. It had been originally built for parties and entertainment by estate owners across the road. In those days, the road was most likely dirt, and so the scene described to us was the dinner guests leaving the large estate house and making their way through the woods to this simple wood shingled building.
Its large main room — elegant, tall casement windows, one after another, and a huge walk-in fireplace on the south side — called for fun and frivolity. And, in fact, there they had after-dinner dancing, toffee pulling and parlor games.
As my eyes scanned the actual building, I pictured the joy and hilarity expressed and impressed in this unique and wild place. The good energy was definitely there in the walls.
From the main room, a hall with four small rooms led to the north, toward the pond below. This had been likely been done in the 1950s. One room seemed to be a possible pantry/kitchen, with a counter, but no cooking or cooling appliances at all.
The others were most likely bedrooms for staff, perhaps. At the end of the hall, a gangplank-like bridge invited one to the bathroom, a singular toilet “closet” in the suspended space, no less.
We were hooked and eagerly put in a bid to make it our home. We got it!
Eric embarked on a wonderful three-level plan, which included a basement level for his home office and an adjacent large room, which would become the “playroom” for hanging out. Eventually, this lowest level would receive windows, and doors leading to a finished courtyard above the vernal pond.
The main level and upstairs were designed for ease of entertainment. I could stand at the kitchen sink seeing and hearing everyone present.
Then the construction started. Ken Rafter was the carpenter, along with Eric and me on weekends.
We started by opening the whole building up. It meant taking out the rooms and hallway. When we did that, the building, for a very short time, was able to shake itself out on a barely perceived vibrational scale, but enough to maintain Eric’s caution and care.
One day, as I worked inside the front door area, a snake jumped out of the wood framing toward Eric, clearly rattled by our noise. One corner of the house was completely covered in carpenter ants. This would not be the last encounter with remarkable living beings of the forest, but they were the only ones who had to be evicted by the new landlords. The other wildlife, including deer, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits and chipmunks, found domicile in the many woodland trees and meadow burrows.
The massive chimney, which remains as it was, stands facing the roadway measuring 15 feet across at the bottom and gracefully curving up beyond the roof to an ample height for the huge fires we would have. The fireplace opening in the house, just under 6 feet tall and 8 feet wide, was redone by Eric to include a raised area for fires and a wood stove as well. Everything worked in tandem to keep us warm and highlight the impressive fireplace.
Ken showed up every day to construct the plan we envisioned. As the project neared completion, we hired a painting crew headed by a friend who was a rising artist. He gathered a posse of starving artists, mostly from south of the border, who delighted in the meticulous challenge of painting the many tall casement windows that we had come to cherish. They scooted all over the structure while playing wonderful Latin music, laughing and chatting.
My mother convinced us to put in a pool. Thus, true to Eric’s unique and beautiful aesthetic, we built one as pond-like as we could to echo the real pond below it in the woods. The interior was painted sand-colored such that the water reflected the sky’s color on any given day. The final touch was a tiny screened gazebo under which all the pool mechanical parts were installed.
When the construction was complete and we had moved in, I asked Eric, “Now, what are we going to do with the property?”
“Nothing,” was his very clear response.
After a few minutes of trying to wrap my head around the concept, I decided not to push the issue. We had done enough for now, and the untended front “lawn” could wait. And it has waited.
We never converted to a “Hamptons” carpet of green. We kept it just as it was, with an annual spring mowing at my insistence. The rawness of this untamed property has given us a look at nature unseen by regularly maintained grass lawns.
Over the decades, the front rise went from tall grasses to a moss-covered hill. We rake all the oak and beech leaves ourselves annually, taking it piece by piece over two weeks each fall. The property hosts wild turkeys, deer, squirrels, chipmunks and birds of all sizes.
The flock of turkeys come to our back door every day, gobbling their anticipation of just a handful of seed, so as not to make them dependent. Deer have given birth near the pond, and in the spring migrating ducks stop to rest and renew strength for a few weeks before flying farther north.
Just outside our front entry is the kitchen garden, located within the same fence required for the pool. In there we have raspberry bushes, asparagus, miniature Asian pear trees, and four raised wooden beds for greens and other summer delights. The fence helps keep out the many animals capable of eating everything there, except the squirrels, which, with their acrobatics, manage to come in from above.
We live a good life up here in the wilds of the Hamptons. I wondered about leaving the village, but this property has taught me so much. Every growing thing is bound for change over time. Nature in its resilient, shifting and vibrant entirety delights, astounds and offers something new almost every day.
It may appear messy, but it is the beautiful mess of the world of wildlife.
Hilary Woodward is a resident of Southampton.
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