After closing its doors to visitors during the pandemic, the Barrington Preservation Society plans to re-open the BPS museum on Saturday, Oct. 29, from 1 to 4 pm, with a new exhibit entitled “Ghost Properties.”

“Ghost Properties” will highlight some of the farmhouses, summer “cottages”, gardens and public buildings in Barrington that have been repurposed, transformed or razed over the past three hundred years.

The exhibit was inspired by a recent donation from Emily Roorbach Kelley of photographs and a plat map for the elegant Allen C. Mathewson estate, landscape drawings and photos from the summer houses at Nayatt Point, as well as the 300-year history of the Peck family’s Osamequin Farm, first purchased from Massasoit Osamequin in 1641. 

The exhibit also includes Karl Jones’ rose garden, the largest private rose garden in the United States and the setting for the Barrington High School Friendship Services until 1985, Barrington’s earliest schools and public buildings, and Walker Farm.

Native Americans hunted, farmed and fished in the East Bay for thousands of years before the arrival of the first European settlers, but the Indians built their houses of bent saplings and woven mats, so little remains except for the stories told by their descendants, but the European settlers built their houses of wood and stone. The oldest remaining house in Barrington is the John Martin House on Massasoit Road. Built in 1680, the farmhouse stayed in the Martin family for several generations, and for most of its history, Barrington remained a farming community and was sparsely developed. The more familiar colonials, split levels and ranch houses characterizing Barrington today date to the 1950’s when the Wampanoag Trail was widened, and Barrington became a commuter suburb of Providence and Pawtucket.

In almost every section of town, however, people can still catch glimpses of Barrington’s more distant past: its early schools, farmhouses, brickmaking, textile manufacturing, rectories, taverns, big estates and summer bungalows.

Join the Barrington Preservation Society and revisit Barrington’s past with “Ghost Properties”. The museum is located on the lower level of the Peck Government Center, and the exhibit will be open on Wednesdays, 1-4 p.m. or by appointment.