Located south of Route 117 on Mountain Road in rural Oxford County, the Churchill Bridge is a rare surviving eighteenth-century span. The bridge is composed of dry laid stone, including five large rectangular slabs laid side to side. It is approximately twenty feet long and ten feet wide and the opening over Bennett Stream is approximately seven feet. The Churchill Bridge exemplifies common bridge building practices in the late eighteenth century, where the abundance of large slabs of stone in New England provided settlers and farmers with material for crossing small to modest waterways. The construction of these types of bridges typically included building up stacked stone posts of smaller rocks along the banks of a crossing and then laying larger, monolithic slabs across the opening. While this area of Buckfield is sparsely populated today, it was one of the earliest settled locations in town and originally known as Owls Head after a nearby hill. By the early nineteenth century, approximately twenty families called this area home. William Churchill settled a homestead in this area and in lieu of paying highway taxes in 1797 he constructed this bridge.
Year Listed: 1994
For more information: https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=208608d5-0b78-42d7-a8e9-1919218a6101