Who lived here
403 Main was the parsonage for the Baptist church next door. The preacher lived in these rooms, and couples came here to be married by him — not in the church, but in the house, in front of a handful of people.
If your family has a story from this house — a wedding in the front room, a visit to the preacher’s family — we would love to hear it. Write to us — we would rather hear it than guess at it, and we will only share what families tell us.
Why a house makes a better venue than a hall
A purpose-built event space has to be persuaded to feel like anything. It starts neutral, which is another way of saying it starts empty, and every gathering held in it has to supply its own character from scratch.
A house does not start neutral. The rooms are the size rooms are meant to be. There are windows where windows go. The proportions were worked out by someone building a place to live in, which is why a table in the middle of one of these rooms looks correct without anybody arranging it.
What we kept
The instinct when converting an old house is to open it up — take out walls, make one large room, maximise capacity. We did not, and the restraint is the whole proposition. The rooms are still rooms. You can still stand in the doorway between two of them.
The same thing, still
A hundred years on, people are still coming to this house to mark the things that matter to them. Different names, different occasions, the same rooms.
That continuity is not a marketing idea we arrived at. It is simply what the building has always been for, and we are fairly certain we are borrowing it rather than owning it.
If you would like to see the house, come and have a look.