Five villages inside one town line
Tamworth is spread across five villages. The drive between them takes you past farms, the Bearcamp River and a lot of mountain views, and Kevin works in all of them.
- Tamworth village, with the Barnstormers Theatre on Main Street and the Remick farm on Cleveland Hill Road
- Chocorua, in the north of town near Chocorua Lake
- South Tamworth and Whittier, along Route 113
- Wonalancet, in the northwest corner on Route 113A, up against the national forest
Houses built to look at a mountain
Many Tamworth houses face something worth looking at: Mount Chocorua across the lake, the Sandwich Range to the north, or the Ossipee Mountains in the southwest corner, where Black Snout tops out at 2,689 feet.
Houses like that tend to have big decks and foundations that step down a slope. Natural fieldstone veneer on the foundation and the deck columns ties the house to its ground. Inside, a stone fireplace surround or hearth wall carries the same idea into the main room.
Round fieldstone suits the farm country around Tamworth village and South Tamworth. Up near Wonalancet, where houses sit in the trees at the edge of the national forest, a darker and more weathered stone tends to settle in well.
Old farmhouses, new additions
The Tamworth Town House dates to 1794, and older farmhouses and barns still stand along plenty of the back roads. When one of those gets an addition, a garage, or a new foundation under an old sill, the new concrete should not be the first thing anyone notices.
Stone veneer handles that. Fieldstone that matches the age of the place, fit tight by hand, lets new work read as part of the old house.
Water, frost and the Bearcamp
The Bearcamp River runs through Tamworth, fed by the Chocorua, Wonalancet and Swift rivers, and the whole town drains to the Saco. Houses on low ground near the rivers and around White Lake deal with wet soil, and open fields freeze hard.
On wet ground the soil around the house matters as much as the wall. Grading that carries water away, and a strip of gravel along the foundation instead of lawn or mulch packed against it, keep the stone from sitting in damp all spring.
The rest of the list
Beyond veneer, Tamworth jobs run to fieldstone walls, steps, walkways and patios. Painting is the other half of the business name, and on an older Tamworth farmhouse it usually means scraping and repainting clapboards and trim.
