Walpole village common
— — a common the white church still gathers.
Not only on a wall.
“The village common in Walpole sits between the white Unitarian church and a row of clapboard houses that have watched it for two centuries. Across the green, L.A. Burdick keeps a small kitchen of chocolate. The Connecticut River runs just below the hill. Cars pull through slowly. People stop to read the war memorial, then keep walking.
Walpole village 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.
Walpole holds about 3,700 people in Cheshire County, in the lower Connecticut River valley of southwestern New Hampshire. The village center, anchored by the common, sits above the river on Route 12. The town was chartered in 1761 and grew on water-powered mills and Connecticut valley farmland. The common is ringed by Federal and Greek Revival houses, the First Unitarian church with its tall white spire, and L.A. Burdick Chocolates, opened by Larry Burdick in 1987 and now a New England destination of its own.
The common is quieter than the road that passes it. Through the warm months farmers come in on Friday afternoons with corn and berries, and the town hall hosts the occasional reading or concert. In winter the green goes white and the chocolate-shop windows hold the light against the early dark. The town has no traffic lights. Most evenings the loudest thing on the common is the bell from First Unitarian, which has hung in the same steeple since the 1820s.
The valley turns first along the river. Sugar maples on the green start to flare in late September, and by the first week of October the common is a slow burn of orange and red against the white church. Snow usually settles in by late November and stays through March. Spring comes late this far north: the common does not really green until mid-May. The Connecticut River below thaws weeks before the high ground does.