Poplin Town Pound Site (1820)
Fremont, Rockingham County, New Hampshire
Marker Inscription
Site of 1820|POPLIN TOWN POUND|Destroyed|circa 1973
The Story
In the farming towns of early New England, a "town pound" was a sturdy walled enclosure—most often built of fieldstone—where stray or trespassing livestock were confined until their owners paid a fine to reclaim them. This one was raised in 1820 in the community then known as Poplin, the name the town of Fremont carried before it was rechristened in the mid-19th century. A humble but essential piece of civic infrastructure, the pound served the surrounding farms for over a century and a half before it was finally destroyed around 1973, leaving only its remembered site.
Why it matters
Town pounds are tangible reminders of how self-governing New England communities managed shared resources and settled everyday disputes among neighbors in the agrarian early republic.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Museums & culture
- Salem Transportation Museum14.0 mi away · 81 Main Street, Salem, NH
- Windham Town Museum14.1 mi away · 3 North Lowell Road, Windham
Attractions
- Policy Pond Log Flume13.7 mi away
- Sea/land Rescue13.7 mi away
- Kiddie Canoes13.7 mi away
- Mine of Lost Souls13.7 mi away
Places to stay
- Holiday Inn Salem14.8 mi away
- La Quinta Inn & Suites Salem NH14.8 mi away · 8 Keewaydin Drive, Salem, NH
Places data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Hours and details change — call ahead.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Across New England the woods hide dry-stone "beehive" chambers — small corbelled huts of carefully stacked fieldstone whose builders and purpose have never been settled. Some scholars read them as colonial-era root cellars, cold stores, or field shelters raised by early farmers clearing this rocky ground; others insist their age and makers remain a genuine puzzle. This marker frames its little hut in exactly that spirit, tying it to the far more famous stone complex at America's Stonehenge in nearby Salem, New Hampshire, where the same questions have drawn curious visitors for generations.
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