ruction. In addition to the brick and
stone, soapstone facings were sometimes shown, but seldom do we come
across good carving.

The crane was a feature of the fireplace, and on it were hung the
pothooks from which depended the iron and brass pots in which food was
cooked. In one side of the bricks, just at the left of the fireplace,
was often a large brick oven with an iron door, and here on baking days
roaring wood fires were kindled to heat the bricks before the weekly
baking was placed within. Examination of these old ovens will be very
apt to reveal the age of the house.

In the remodeling it is well to leave the fireplaces much as they stand,
with the exception of bricking them in, for the old ones allowed too
much air to come down the chimney, and at the present high price of
wood, we are not able to indulge in the ten-foot logs that were in
evidence in our grandmothers' time.

A house with many fireplaces that stands back from the winding country
road on the border line between Medfield and Walpole in Massachusetts
was chosen for a summer home by Charles E. Inches. It is shaded now as
it was long ago by large, old elms whose widespreading branches seem to
add a note of hospitality to this most attractive estate. Possibly there
are better examples of the restored farmhouse than this one found at
Medfield, but it is very picturesque, not only in type but in
surroundings. It stands near a turn of the road, where it was erected,
in 1652, situated in a sheltered glen and protected from cold winds.

[Illustration: Front View showing the Old Well]

At that time it was a small and unpretentious building about twenty feet
long and showing in the interior fine examples of hand-hewn timbers.
Even in its dilapidated state it was most attractive, with its many
fireplaces and old woodwork. This particular house has two values, the
one relating to its historical record and the other to its old-time
construction. Through two centuries this little farmhouse had been the
home of the Adams family, a branch that was near in kin to the
presidential line of Adams who lived at Quincy, Massachusetts.

[Illustration: Before Remodeling]

At the time of its building, a stream wound in and out through the
meadow land that was a part of the property. It was such a large stream
that it afforded sufficient power to run an old mill that originally
stood on the estate and which for many years ground the neighbors'
grain. On a ridge oppo