Harlow Old Fort House, Colonial fort house in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The Harlow Old Fort House is a two-story wooden colonial house on Sandwich Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts. It is one of the oldest surviving timber-frame structures in the region and shows the construction style typical of late 17th-century New England homes.
The house was built in 1677 by Sergeant William Harlow, one of the early residents of Plymouth Colony. He used timber salvaged from the original Pilgrim fort on Burial Hill, which had been constructed in the early 1600s.
The house is managed by the Plymouth Antiquarian Society and offers hands-on demonstrations of 17th-century crafts. Visitors can watch spinning, weaving, and open-hearth cooking performed the way they would have been done in an early settler household.
The house is generally open during the summer months and offers guided tours, so it is worth checking access times before visiting. It sits near other historic sites in Plymouth, making it easy to combine with a walk through the town center.
The timber beams inside the house came from a fort built before most European settlements in the region even existed. This means the building holds material from two different centuries within the same walls, a rare situation for a private home.
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