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History and a Home, meet Henry Wood
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Clingstone, an unusual, 103-year-old
mansion in Rhode Island 's Narragansett Bay , survives through the love and hard work
of family and friends.
Henry Wood, the owner, runs the house like
a camp: all skilled workers welcome.
The Jamestown Boatyard hauls the
family's boats and floating dock and stores
them each winter in return for a
week's use of the house in the summer.
Mr. Wood, a 79-year-old
Boston
architect, bought the house with his ex-wife Joan
in 1961 for
$3,600. It had been empty for two decades.
Clingstone had been built by a distant
cousin, J.S. Lovering Wharton. Mr. Wharton
worked with an artist, William
Trost Richards, to create a house of picture windows
with 23 rooms on three
stories radiating off a vast central hall.
The total cost of the
construction, which was completed in 1905, was
$36,982.99
An early sketch of the house. Mr. Wood is
as proud as any parent of his house,
and keeps a fat scrapbook of
photographs and newspaper clippings that document
its best moments. Many of
the historic photos he has were provided by the company
that insured the
house for its original owners.
The Newport Bridge is visible from the windows of the
Ping-Pong room,
to the left of the
fireplace.
The house is maintained by an ingenious
method: the Clingstone work weekend. Held
every year around Memorial Day,
it brings 70 or so friends and Clingstone lovers
together to tackle jobs
like washing all 65 of the windows. Anne Tait, who is married
to Mr. Wood's
son Dan, refinished the kitchen floor on one of her first work
weekends.
There are 10 bedrooms at
Clingstone, all with indecently beautiful views
The dining room table seats 14.
Refinishing the chairs is a task on the list
for a future work
weekend.
Sign by the ladder that leads to the roof
reads: No entry after three drinks
or 86 years of age. "It used to say 80
but we had a guy on a work weekend
who was 84, so I changed it," said Mr.
Wood, ever the realist. It would have
been a shame to curtail the
activities of a willing volunteer.
No lawn, no neighbors, no solicitors,
no busy streets!
story courtesy Imogene Warner
shared with LIFE ON THE WATER Magazine by
Tom Hudson, Nashville, TN
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