Wilton village in autumn
— — a mill town the maples come back to.
Not only on a wall.
“Wilton sits along the Souhegan River in the hills of southern New Hampshire, a small mill town whose granite blocks and brick façades have held since the 19th century. In October the maples along Main Street turn first, then the hillsides above the village. The Town Hall Theatre still runs film through the season. People walk the bridge over the river slowly, looking up.
Wilton village in autumn, 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.
Wilton holds about 3,800 people in Hillsborough County, in the Souhegan River valley of southern New Hampshire. The town was chartered in 1762. The village grew on water-powered mills along the Souhegan: sawmills first, then textile and furniture mills through the 19th century, and the old mill blocks still define the river side of Main Street. The Wilton Town Hall, finished in the 1880s, houses the Wilton Town Hall Theatre, a working movie house run for generations by the Stiles family.
The Souhegan valley turns through the first three weeks of October. Sugar maples along the river and across the hills above the village come first, yellow to orange to a deep red, in that order, then drop. The brick and granite of the old mill blocks holds the color in counterpoint. Mornings come in with valley fog along the river. By the first hard frost in late October the leaves are down and the village reads as bare brick against grey sky.
Wilton is about ten miles west of Nashua on Route 101. The village center holds the Town Hall Theatre, a small downtown of shops and cafés, and a riverside walk along the Souhegan. The theater shows current films and a long-running classic series on weekends; tickets are inexpensive by design. The pedestrian bridge over the river is a short walk from the common. Parking is free along Main Street and behind the town hall.