Some TLC ahead for Ashburnham meeting house

George Cornwall, president of the Ashburnham Historical Society, stands in front of the historical building, which is in need of repairs. SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / Ashley Green

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By Anna Burgess

aburgess@sentineland enterprise.com

ASHBURNHAM -- Thanks to a community-preservation grant from the state, the Ashburnham Historical Society will finally get the restored meeting house it has been wanting for several years now.

With help from outgoing state Sen. Stephen Brewer, the Historical Society succeeded last year in securing $175,000 in funding to restore the town's historic meeting house. The meeting house, which has served as everything from Town Hall to the town morgue since the 1800s, currently houses historical artifacts and documents and is the location of the Historical Society.

Historical Society President George Cornwall said he has seen the building fall into disrepair during the past 20 years. He got involved with the society in the hopes of restoring the meeting house, and after several years of work was able to get state funding for the restoration project through a community-preservation grant.

"It's been an ongoing process. We've been actively at it now for about two years," Cornwall said. "It's been a slow process, but we're happy to have (the funding) now, and we're ready to get going."

"I was very happy to be able to help," said Brewer, who is retiring. "These historical societies work very hard to preserve the heritage that our country was built on, and you can't sell enough cookies to find enough money to fix these buildings up."

The first meeting house was built in the 1700s on Meeting House Hill, but it burned down.

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Some TLC ahead for Ashburnham meeting house