Frequently the petitions "to build a Sabbath Day House" or a "Housel for
Shelter for Horss" were made in company by several farmers for their joint
use and comfort, as shown by entries in the town and church records of
Norwalk, New Milford, Durham, and Hartford.
Noon-houses were much more frequent in Connecticut than in Massachusetts,
and in several small towns in the former State they were used weekly
between Sunday services until within the memory of persons now living;
and some of the buildings still exist, though changed into granaries or
stables. There was one also in use for many years and until recent years in
Topsfield, in Massachusetts. We chanced upon one still standing on a lonely
Narragansett road. A little enclosed burial-place, with moss-grown and
weather-smoothed head-stones and neglected graves, was by the side of a
filled-in cellar, upon which a church evidently had once stood. At a short
distance from the church-site was a long, low, gray, weather-beaten wooden
building, with a coarse stone-and-mortar chimney at one end, and a great
door at the other. Two small windows, destitute of glass, permitted us
to peer into the interior of this dilapidated old structure, and we saw
within, a floor of beaten earth, a rough stone fireplace, and a few rude
horse-stalls. We felt sure that this tumble-down building had been neither
a dwelling-house nor a stable, but a noon-house; and the occupants of a
neighboring farm-house confirmed our decision.
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