Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm
Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm is a family-friendly site with activities for visitors of all ages. The 230-acre site includes a late seventeenth-century manor house that served as the country seat of wealthy Newburyport merchants and an attached farmhouse that was home to a Lithuanian farm family for most of the twentieth century. The site also fosters farm animals in partnership with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Visit friendly sheep, goats, chickens, and a horse throughout the year.
Learn about life on a farm over the centuries through hands-on activities. Pump water from the well outside the kitchen or sit in a horsehair-covered rocking chair and look through a stereo-viewer in the nineteenth-century parlor. Become an archaeologist as you piece “artifacts” together. Explore nature trails, and enjoy a picnic under ancient maple trees. The farm is open on a drop-in basis.
Nature walks, family events, and lectures are held at the farm year-round. Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm visitor center houses a museum gift shop offering books, gifts and local products.
Open
Thursday – Sunday, June 1 to October 15
11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Grounds open sunrise to sunset, year round.
Closed most major holidays.
The Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm is a Historic New England property.
Top photo: Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm exterior - Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm is a family-friendly site with activities for visitors of all ages. The 230-acre site includes a late seventeenth-century manor house that served as the country seat of wealthy Newburyport merchants and an attached farmhouse that was home to a Lithuanian farm family for most of the twentieth century.
Bottom photo: Little living room - After the farm was sold in 1812, it was used as an income property for nearly forty years. It was rented to many tenants, and sometimes multiple farmers rented portions of the building and land. In 1851, Edward Little, a descendant of early settlers of Newbury, leased the entire farm. By 1861, his hard work and shrewd business investments made it possible for him to purchase the farm outright. Edward Little moved his wife and four children into the main house and made decorative changes to the house to update it for his middle-class Victorian family. A window was added in the front room, the doors were grain-pained, and rugs were installed.