House for Sale | Chasing Sunbeams at ‘Hidden Wells’ 

Originally published in the July 1990 issue of Yankee.

“Turn in here!” said Betty Noble to her husband, Bill, as they drove by an apparently deserted 2½-story Colonial they’d noticed several times during their back-roads search for property in Rhode Island during the summer of 1958. “You can’t be serious,” Bill remembers replying, but he turned into an area of tall grass between the old house and one of the barns, and they peeked in the windows. The first thing they saw was that the ceiling was sagging so badly in one of the front rooms that a chandelier was hanging within a foot of the floor. Then they noticed the place was full of cats! 

“This is the place for us,” Betty said with a finality Bill knew to be irreversible. He remembers “being in a state of shock.” But since moving to a new job in Providence from Guilford, Connecticut, that spring, they’d not been able to find what they wanted—i.e., something very old with room for their three children and, later perhaps, one of their own parents; plenty of land for privacy and animals; and all for very little money!

Well, with Betty, an accomplished artist, visualizing how gorgeous this old place could be and Bill, an amateur carpenter, becoming excited about the work required to make it so, they located the owner, Helen Steere, who lived nearby and who kept her 13 cats in there so people would think it was lived in. Their $10,000 offer was accepted, and suddenly the Nobles were the fourth family to own “Hidden Wells,” as the old farm has been known locally since it was built by George Howland in 1729. Turned out that Helen Steere was a descendant of the prominent Israel Smith family of Rhode Island, lineal descendants of none other than Roger Williams. The Smiths purchased it in 1758, and thereafter several generations of Smiths lived in this house from birth to death, including Israel Smith’s grandson, Martin, who, until he died in 1936, was the oldest living graduate of Brown University. In other words, the Nobles had happened on, and were about to save, a significant part of Rhode Island history. 

They also had a 17-room house that was about to collapse! Plus 22 beautiful acres (now 17) and valuable—particularly from a historical point of view—outbuildings galore. Eventually they gave the three-hole privy and the corncrib to Old Sturbridge Village, while the blacksmith shop and attached oxen shed went to the Guilford (Connecticut) Keeping Society. All are on display at those places today. 

However, first things first. Before the bank would even agree to a mortgage, they had to repair the ceilings and other basic structural elements and bring in water and plumbing. Bill recalls digging the silt out of the bottom of one of the three stone-lined dug wells and “expecting at any moment to encounter one of the huge black snakes various locals told us were down there.” 

They did hire a contractor at the beginning, but they worked right along with him and by themselves almost every evening “until midnight or beyond.” Even the children took part. One evening Bill returned home from work to encounter his son, Randy, hauling his little red wagon chockfull of the old plaster Betty was ripping out of one of the ceilings. By late October of that first year, they at least had a solid roof over their heads, running water, and enough of the seven fireplaces operating to join forces with an ancient oil furnace to provide heat. They were going to survive. “Basically, we lived in just two rooms that first winter,” Betty remembers. 

For the next several years they worked room by room—scraping, cleaning, refurbishing, restoring, and replacing. When they found that the comparatively “modern” Victorian windows on the south side were rotten, for instance, they replaced them with authentic 18th-century 12-over- 12 windows. They redid the roof, the wiring, the chimneys, installed three nice full bathrooms, uncovered fireplaces, exposed ceiling beams and wide floorboards, equipped the kitchen with modern appliances, put in a modern heating system—and all the time they took care to maintain the original house plan. In other words, removing or changing walls and doors was kept to a minimum. “If Martin Smith were to walk through this house today,” says Betty, “he’d still feel at home.” 

Outside, they restored the old gardens, built a greenhouse, repaired the stone walls and wells, converted a 60’x20’ oxen shed off the kitchen into a screened-in “summer room,” filled the barns with the kids’ horses plus a few steers, and eventually put in a gorgeous in-ground swimming pool next to the summer room. They even found time to plant about a hundred Christmas trees every year to harvest for their friends. 

“It was the most rewarding time of our lives,” they both maintain today. As Elizabeth Fiske Conant ( one of Betty’s favorite poets) once wrote, “He who loves an old house never loves in vain.” 

Now Bill and Betty are living alone. Their children (“who don’t want us ever to sell Hidden Wells”) have long since moved away and are on their own. There are grandchildren now, and Bill retired a few years ago. The most beloved of their family horses is buried in a grassy area next to the two barns, one of which is now empty and the other used for cars. Maybe, Bill and Betty are thinking, it’s time to find a smaller place. Do something different. Take on a new challenge. And, thanks to a tip from one of our Rhode Island spies, that’s where we moseyed into the picture … 

* * *

The Nobles greeted us at the door. Tall, handsome, and obviously very much at ease with people, neither looked anywhere near old enough to have children in their early forties. For a few minutes we sat in front of a large brick fireplace (with beehive oven) in the living room or, as they still call it, the “keeping room.” A skillet of cheese scones, made by Betty that morning, was warming next to the fire. We put butter on ours and dipped it in our coffee. While we chatted, their new one-year-old Norfolk terrier, Dickens, commenced to chase and jump at moving shadows playing over the sunbeams that spilled in through those 12-over-12 windows. On the wall behind our chair were displayed a half-dozen wooden shoe lasts, sized from children’s to very large, that the Nobles had found in one of the barns that first hectic summer 32 years ago. 

Did they have any advice for young couples thinking of setting out to restore an old house, we wondered? “Do it!” they said, and we all laughed at the fact they’d responded in unison. 

“Be cautious but not too timid,” said Bill more thoughtfully. 

“Move slowly and live with each step for a while,” said Betty and recalled how they had wallpapered several rooms too quickly. “We realized later that simple white plaster would accent the beams and wooden trim far more effectively,” she said. 

“Pay for everything as you go along,” said Bill. He told us how he figured replacing a certain old bathtub would require only a couple of hours—until he discovered the need to replace the rotting floor and wall boards around it. “Took three or four days—and manymore dollars than planned,” he recalled. 

“And don’t back off from a project—no matter how overwhelming it seems at first,” they both agreed. 

From the keeping room we walked into the dining room with a gorgeous long table made by Bill years ago from chestnut boards found in the cellar. The fireplace here, slightly smaller than in the keeping room, is made of granite slabs and has two small holes at the back of the hearth about two feet from the floor level. “Those are ‘windy boxes,’” Bill explained, “designed to prevent down drafts from blowing smoke out into the room.” An even more fascinating item in this room is the buffet table. It’s the actual workbench used during the building of the house in 1729! Incredibly gouged, scratched, and worn, it still has its original two wooden vises. 

Beyond the dining room we entered an area used during two separate periods of several years as an apartment for, first, Betty’s elderly mother and then, when she passed on, Bill’s stepmother. It consists of a living room (in which are displayed dozens of old bottles dug up by the Nobles in the ancient dump behind the house), a small bedroom, and a large full bath that was once the “borning room.” Here Martin Smith and many other Smiths came into the world. Betty showed us a small metal hook that the people at Sturbridge Village said was often found in borning rooms. It used to be screwed into the ceiling and a sheet looped through it. The woman would grasp both ends of the sheet for leverage while giving birth. 

From here we climbed stairs to two large, sunny bedrooms with fireplaces. Then, past another bathroom, down a hall, and through a small den, we came to the master “bedroom/studio,” as they call it, with full bath and space enough for two working or sitting areas. It has a small fireplace the Nobles uncovered during the restoration work. Here, according to their research, fugitive slaves bound for Canada would cook their meals while remaining hidden.

From the master bedroom, a second set of stairs led us back down to the first floor where we came to the pantry and the small kitchen in which Betty hangs everything from baskets to dried flowers to old kitchen implements. It’s modern in every practical way—but looks like a room in a museum! “Incidentally,” said Betty as we peered down the stairs to the cellar where a tunnel, used to roll cider barrels in from the road, still exists, “when we first walked into this kitchen, we found a basketful of feathered chicken wings. An old-timer down the road told me later that these were used to sweep out the fireplace hearths.” That was a new one for us. 

Off the kitchen we stepped out into the summer room, decorated with Betty’s lovely animal paintings on pieces of slate. It overlooks the swimming pool and a good portion of the very private 17 acres. Skinny-dipping would present no problem here! 

Of course we had to see the barns out beyond what has to be one of the largest maple trees in existence (“Planted in 1847 by one of the Smith brothers, who was a chemist for Lydia Pinkham,” Bill told us). In one barn is a white 1969 Cadillac convertible that Bill says he might consider parting with. 

Where will the Nobles go this summer after Hidden Wells is sold for only the fourth time in its history? Well, they told us they have their eye on a modern house made of logs with lots of glass overlooking a lake and mountains up in Wilton, Maine. “But don’t make us reminisce about Hidden Wells anymore, or we might change our minds and stay here,” said Betty, adding, “and besides, I might begin to cry.” 

Like their little dog, Dickens, we thought as we headed home later that day, Bill and Betty Noble are still chasing sunbeams …

With 17 acres, Hidden Wells is being offered at $499,000.

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