1 HEBE LANE (Ledgedge)

Essay by Sarah Bell Bryant, Summer, 2008:

My grandparents, Marion and Edward Walkley, lived in Marblehead, Mass., and had good friends, the Homans, who lived in the Monadnock area.  The Homans must have inspired my grandparents to buy the property on Sunset Lake in 1924.  In 1925 Marion and Edward built a wooden tent-shaped cabin, complete with a Franklin stove. They added a small kitchen in 1929 with an icebox cooled by ice cut from the lake.  Drinking water was collected from a natural spring in the nearby woods.  We still depended on these old-fashioned sources of heat, cooling and water when I was a child in the 1950s.  Electricity was added in 1937 and running water from the lake in 1958.  We know all these details because since the very beginning my family wrote about their visits in a guestbook.  They seemed to have a fabulous time in spite of the primitive, cramped conditions.

The Walkleys and their three children, Ev, Alb and Kate (my mother), along with Marion’s sister Helen came to stay at the cabin summer and winter.  They often climbed Crotched and would picnic at Sabine’s Knoll.  They enjoyed the lake on their canoe, kayak and sailboat.  One winter Edward, Ev and Alb walked across the lake on the ice.  In 1936 they came up to see the ruins of the huge Greenfield fire.  In 1937 they saw their first play at the Peterborough Players and in 1941 they joined in the celebration of Greenfield’s 150th anniversary.

My parents, Kate and Randy Bell, married during the war and settled in Marblehead in the late forties.  My brother, sister, and I all came to the lake for the first time within months of our births.  When we were young we came to Greenfield every summer for two or three weeks.  Alan played with “Tiny” Elberfeld down the road and Dick Buxton taught him how to waterski.  In 1954 we put in the swimming float and from then on my sister and I spent most of our time in the water.

Sometimes we came up in the winter.  In 1957 we all watched the last cutting of ice on the lake.  I guess it was finally time to get a refrigerator.  Further renovations made coming in the winter much more comfortable.  We came up often to ski at Crotched and Sunapee.  Soon we children were old enough to visit on our own.  In 1970 my husband Bob and I spent our honeymoon at Ledgedge.

Marion and Helen (to us Granny and Tee) continued to enjoy visits to the cabin into their 90s.  Granny celebrated her 92nd birthday here and we have pictures of Tee enjoying the view at age 96.

My parents retired and moved to nearby Peterborough in 1979.  The cabin proved to be a great way to entertain the grandchildren.  After 70 years of making do with an outhouse and a chemical toilet we finally entered the modern era and got a septic system in 1995!  And instead of a tiny plank of a dock we added one over the water where a group of people could sit and admire the sunset.  Staying at the lake for more than a couple of days was now a very attractive possibility.

When my parents died in 1997 and 1998 Kathy and I decided to keep the cabin in the family.  Now our children come on their own.  Kathy’s daughter Amy got engaged overlooking Sunset Lake and son Peter and his groomsmen stayed at the cabin the night before his wedding.  What is so wonderful about Ledgedge is that the cabin and the lake have changed so little over time.