Town Pound, Eighteen Oh Five

This stone pen, marked eighteen oh five, is a town pound, a once-essential village institution that almost no one recognizes today. In colonial and early New England, farm animals were often left to wander, and a single loose ox or hog could destroy a neighbor's garden or grain field overnight. The town pound was the answer, a sturdy enclosure where stray animals were locked up until their owners paid a fee to reclaim them.

Towns often recorded ear markings to identify each animal's owner. Pounds could also confine livestock taken for unpaid debts, which could then be sold at auction. Pounds go back to the early colonial era, and as wooden pens rotted, many towns rebuilt in stone. That is why this quiet wall still stands.