The History of the Village Green in Branford and Abroad

The Village Green is a central aspect of the New England history and culture. Many of the towns in New England, like Branford, are centered around a common or green, to the extent that writers from Henry James to John Updike have written about these characteristic–and loved–places. James described these places as "elm-shaded" in The American Scene, and though the elms on Branford Green are few and far between these days, before the Hurricane of '38 and the spread of Dutch Elm's disease that hit not long after, Branford easily fit James's depiction. Updike, in the preface for On Common Land, contrasts the architecture of a New England town, centered around its "heart" at the green, with the "merciless grid" of Manhattan and the Midwest. While, as a native Midwesterner, I do love my easily-navigable grids (and have done my fair share of cursing the cows that apparently plotted the paths that became the streets of Boston), I admit that Updike has a point. There's a character that comes with a village green, and you can tell a lot by a town by taking a look at that common area.

's question, into the idea of the village green, was whether or not Branford Green's triangular shape was unique in New England. According to Louise Andrews Kent's Village Greens of New England, that triangular shape is not only not unique–it's the norm. "Usually [greens] are triangular," she writes, and follows by pointing out several exceptions where the greens are different shapes: oblong, oval, or crescent. Clearly many of the larger greens and commons are rectangular, as is the case for New Haven Green and Boston Common. But in Kent's research, published in 1948, the triangle was the thing. The Town Greens website, sponsored by the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, lists 66 triangular greens in their database.

So where did the concept of the village green start? I had a feeling the tradition was English; it's actually part of an earlier Anglo-Saxon tradition. When the Angles and Saxons still lived in Germany, they used a style of agriculture known as the common field system, in which groups would share a common space, particularly to pasture their animals. Cattle particularly could be better protected from predators, such as wolves, in a common space. According to Ronald Lee Fleming and Lauri A. Halderman in their On Common Ground, as the Anglo-Saxons ruled in England, this use of common land became codified: land could either belong to a particular owner, or it could belong to the king. Because the king used only a small amount of the land that belonged to him, some of this was allotted as public land, for uses determined by the local nobles and representatives of the peasants in a village. Usually this land became used as a shared pasture, a place to gather firewood (for personal use, not for sale), for digging peat for fuel, for fishing, and for other basic necessities. Kent writes that there is a record in 1500 of village elders organizing their community around such a common space, and the responsibility of caring for the common land was divided according to the nearest householders surrounding it. When the first English settlers came to America, they brought the concept of the common field system with them. As many of the settlers were Puritans, they also used the common land to emphasize the community-based nature of their religion. It also handed much of the guiding power of the community to the elders, who would determine how common land was used. But problems arose with the system, particularly due to the responsibilities–and rights–associated with parts of the common. Many settlements judged that only the town founders and their families would have rights to use the common, and later settlers would not, for example. In other communities, raising cattle was not as lucrative as the villagers had thought, and some abandoned the practice, thus changing their needs for use of the land. As the agricultural uses of the town common diminished, the common predominantly became the location of the town meetinghouse–which in most cases was both the church and the center of government, as the two were intimately tied together in New England's early years. The green could also be used as the location for the militia to drill, which was one of the early uses for Branford Green. The village green as a space for recreation typically came later, with the possible exception of Merrymount, MA, where founder Thomas Morton set up a maypole and held dances on the green (inviting the local Native Americans to join in), which dismayed his Puritan neighbors so much they eventually forced him into exile and sent him back to England.

Branford Green was originally land from John Taintor's homelot, bordering the then-current common lands. In his will, he specified that what is now the green should be used as a common by the Branford citizens, so long as there was a meetinghouse on the property. The original property was hilly and contained at least one house-sized boulder. The previous meetinghouse was located where Center Cemetery now stands; in 1700, a new meetinghouse was built close to the present location of First Congregational Church. As the community of Branford expanded, some residents had trouble coming in to the center for the mandatory Sunday meetings, and so they built small "Sabbath houses" that would provide them with overnight shelter for their weekly visits. A blacksmith shop was built near where Trinity Episcopal Church is now.

What about the use of the green for public punishments and execution, as asked? In fact, the Green had "whipping post hill," which included a stocks and pillory and was in use through the mid-1800s. (The hill was leveled to make way for the Baptist Church to be built there in 1840.) But, to further address Maureen's questions, Branford never had a witch executed on the Green; according to the records of the Connecticut General Assembly, no Branford resident was accused of being a witch at all. (And, for the record, the witches found guilty in Connecticut were typically hanged, not burned.) Behind Town Hall, which was built in 1857, there stood an old stone jail, horse stables, and space for public works equipment. A baseball field stood in front of Town Hall until it was removed during the 1890s. Of the buildings still standing on the green, the oldest is the Academy, built in 1820 on the current site of Town Hall, and moved to its present location in 1971, when it was restored. The modern Trinity Church was built in 1851 on the site of the original 1786 building; First Congregational Church was built on the original site of the meetinghouse in 1843, with a major remodeling in 1868. But despite the building taking place on the Green, it wasn't yet pretty: in 1873, the hills and hollows were cleared by local citizens, creating the pleasant-looking space that resembles the modern Green. In the 1890s, citizens were barred from grazing livestock on the Green, and in the 1900s, the roads surrounding the Green were widened to accommodate automobile traffic. The modern Green and downtown were revitalized during the 1980s, when a landscape architectural office added the benches, lights, bus shelters, and a drinking fountain. According to the Town of Branford website, there are continued plans to "preserve and enhance the 18th and 19th century heritage and charm of the Green," ensuring that Branford's character will be clear by looking at our town center for years to come.