Avon Historic Sites Open for the Season

Editor’s note: We published this story earlier in the week, but here it is again in case you missed it.

The Pine Grove School House and the Derrin Farmhouse are ready for the summer tourist season and will be open every Sunday through September from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.

The Pine Grove Schoolhouse, built in 1865 as Schoolhouse No. 7, will be 150 years old this year and opened with a celebration on June 7. The Derrin Farmhouse (c. 1810), will open for the season today at 2 p.m. The opening will feature a tag sale as a fundraiser for continued restoration of the building.

Still standing in its original location, the Pine Grove Schoolhouse is owned by the town of Avon. It was in use as a school until 1949 when it became a branch of the town library, nursery school, and meeting place for the Boy Scouts. The Avon Historical Society restored the building in 1976 and it is interpreted as a schoolhouse of 1900 with bolted desks, hand slates, textbooks, and other educational memorabilia of the time.

Thanks to a grant from the Farmington Bank Foundation in 2009, all lead paint on the exterior was remediated. During the summer of 2012, the almost 100-year old outhouse was restored by J&A Construction of New Haven and Avon and placed near its original location.

In 2014, an informational two-sided kiosk, built as an Eagle Scout project, containing history and photos of the school was installed on the front lawn. On the back south side, locally quarried stone steps were added to the side door. Thanks to a repair and maintenance grant from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, several foundations and very generous individual donors, 112 panes of glass in the windows of the schoolhouse, most of them original, were restored during the summer of 2014.

The Derrin Farmhouse has the first floor open to the public while restoration continues in other parts of the building. It was leased in 1996 by the State of Connecticut, Department of the Military to the Avon Historical Society.

The land that the current structure sits on was the property of the Derrin family for over 150 years (1766-1920). This structure, now on the Connecticut State Register of Historic Places (2014), traces its roots to the late 18th century.

One can see the progress the family made as the house was expanded again and again. Currently under an adaptive-reuse, the Derrin Farmhouse is a testimony to a way of life that has virtually disappeared from our region - the family farm. Filled with period furniture and implements, the Derrin Farmhouse invites visitors to learn what life was like on a 19th century New England farm where the weather and wide variety of soil types always made life interesting.

Included on the property is a mounted sign, created as an Eagle Scout project, with information about the Horse Guard State Park Scenic Reserve that surrounds the farmhouse. It also includes a restored main trail and hitching post near the trail head. The public is encouraged to hike the trail to the top and enjoy the views of the valley.