The Blooming at “Iristhorpe” 
BEING THE CHRONICLE OF A PLAIN FARMHOUSE WHICH 
CAME INTO ITS OWN WITH THE HELP OF THE IRIS 
by Mary H. Northend 
i C T RISTHORPE” began life as a plain farmhouse. That 
A was about a hundred and fifty-five years ago. It stood 
dose by the dusty highway near Shrewsbury in Massachusetts, 
and there was not the least pretense at any kind of architectural 
amenity about it. It was just as plain as the proverbial “pla.i n 
Jane,” and, in appearance, not unlike the stiff little houses with 
white sides and green or yellow roofs that we used, as children, 
to put in our Christmas-tree gardens and surround with Mr. and 
Mrs. Noah's family and all the animals out of the Ark. There 
were no irises to suggest a name except, perhaps, some growing 
wild in the marshy spots of back fields, and the mere idea of 
calling the place bv any 
other title than the pos¬ 
sessive case of his own 
cognomen would proba¬ 
bly have filled the first 
owner with amazement 
and scorn. 
When the house was 
built in 1760, it was only 
an excellent example of 
the type familiar all 
through New England. 
It had two floors and an 
attic with a pitch roof 
coming down in a long 
slope at the back all the 
way to the eaves of the 
kitchen in the one-storv 
ell. The structure was 
anchored firmly about 
two full-throated, 
staunchly - built stone 
chimneys, and the fram¬ 
ing, of buxom, well-sea¬ 
soned hewn timbers, was 
mortised and tenoned to¬ 
gether with such work¬ 
manlike skill that it is as strong to-day as it was when the car¬ 
penters stuck a bush on the chimney or ridgepole to show that 
their work was just finished. Hard by the kitchen door were the 
other farmstead buildings, barn and byre, woodshed and corn 
crib, henhouse and pigstye. The place was innocent of even the 
suggestion of a garden, for the former occupants’ interests were 
agricultural rather than horticultural, and did not extend further 
in the gardening direction than the care of the truck patch whence 
came the “garden sass.” But the house was thoroughly honest 
in structure and materials, as honest as the day is long in every 
particular, and the sterling character of the old work has made 
the recent transformation 
possible. 
Five years ago the 
present owners came into 
possession. Neither 
buildings nor worn-out 
farm land apparently had 
much to commend them, 
but there were latent pos¬ 
sibilities. Some of these 
the eye of the new mis¬ 
tress was quick to detect 
at once, while others only 
revealed themselves grad¬ 
ually from week to week 
and month to month. It 
was at first designed to 
repair the old house suf¬ 
ficiently to live in while a 
new house, near the cen¬ 
ter of the estate, was a- 
building. The cellar for 
that new house was dug 
and a part of the founda¬ 
tions built, but there the 
work stopped. The old 
clapboarded farmhouse 
The outdoor living-room at Iristhorpe showing the iris border with the motif repeated in the 
furnishings 
87 
