Hancock Common
— — a white steeple against a long green.
Not only on a wall.
“A long village green in southwestern New Hampshire, framed by white clapboard houses and the 1820 Meetinghouse at the north end. The bell in the tower was cast at the Paul Revere foundry in Boston. The whole village sits on the National Register. People still gather on the common in summer for band concerts, the way they have for generations.
Hancock Common, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Hancock sits in Hillsborough County in southwestern New Hampshire, in the Monadnock region. The town was incorporated in 1779 and named for John Hancock, who held land here at the time. Roughly 1,700 people live in the town today. The common runs along Main Street, anchored at the north end by the Meetinghouse of 1820 and flanked by the Hancock Inn, opened in 1789 and one of the oldest continuously operating inns in New Hampshire. The whole village was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
The Meetinghouse at the head of the common was raised in 1820, and the bell in its tower was cast at the Paul Revere foundry in Boston. The same bell still rings for town meeting, for the Fourth of July, and to mark a death in the town. Summer band concerts on the common have been part of the calendar since the nineteenth century. The Hancock Inn across the way opened in 1789. Mount Monadnock rises about ten miles to the southwest, visible from open ground above the village.
A New England common reads differently in each season. The maples along the Hancock green turn deep red by early October, drawing leaf-peepers off Route 202 onto the side roads. Winter leaves the steeple sharp against bare elms and a flat grey sky. Spring is mud and tulips. Summer brings band concerts on the common, Old Home Days, and long evenings on the porch of the Hancock Inn. The historical society keeps a calendar of events on the common from May through October.