THE TOWN
Incorporated in 1675, joining Rhode Island in 1747 to become its southeasternmost township, Little Compton is a New England paradise replete with all the characteristics of a Colonial settlement. Its picture-postcard Commons (the State's only town common) features a white, steepled church, a centuries-old graveyard, a central green, and an old-fashioned general store. Its venerable Town Meeting keeps watch over Rhode Island's second-lowest property tax rate. Town ordinances preserve its attractive rural character by forbidding condominiums and new lots less than two acres. Shingled 18th- and 19th-century homesteads stand at the end of winding tree-lined driveways, together with country lanes, hayfields, woods, orchards, sheep and cow pastures with three-story barns and silos, vineyards, specimen trees, protected open land, miles of stone walls, white- sand beaches, and a small harbor.
Take a look at a few 360° views of the property.
THE PROPERTY
Seaconnet Point Farm occupies Sakonnet Point, Little Compton's southwesternmost point and summer quarters of the Seaconnet Indians, whose sachem was Queen Awashonks, cousin to King Philip. Of the Farm's 74.6 acres, 45.9 have been placed in permanent conservation easement. Its long gated entrance drive (Washington Road) passes open meadows unmarred by utility poles. The Farm contains only six residences and one buildable lot.
Watch House (Assessors' Plat 9, Lot 400-4A99) at 47 Washington Road comprises 11.7 acres of oceanfront land, a wholly private white-sand beach, a coastal pond, and a building site on a broad and level lawn over granite bedrock, 260 feet from the ocean yet above the 500-year floodplain. Over the past 70 years the site's shoreline, clad with grandfathered sea walls and interlocking armor stone, has experienced little change.
Seaconnet Point Farm: Watch House colored blue; Carriage House colored red.
Click on the colored areas to pull up information regarding the two properties.
Also for sale by Judy Chace
Carriage House, adjacent to Watch House, contains a 3-bedroom house and 4 1/2 acres of land. The properties may be purchased separately or in a package.
The site has a Coastal Resources Management Council assent, a Department of Environmental Management septic system permit for a 6-bedroom single-family residence within a footprint of 6,000 sq. ft. atop the large filled basement of the old Watch House, and the recorded right to draw water from an existing privately-owned public water system. No right-of-way intrudes upon its insulated privacy, but together with the other homes on the Farm it enjoys a pedestrian right-of-way to Horse Rock and to West Beach's 2,000 feet of white sand, owned by The Nature Conservancy. Watch House's 2009 property tax was just $14,800.88.
Click on the images to view the gallery of aerial photographs.
Like its predecessor – Henry Demarest Lloyd's "Watch House," an 1896 shingled summer cottage of 42 rooms – a home on this site will command a 360° clockwise view of: – Round Pond to the northeast; Cuttyhunk Island; Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard; lying just offshore, East Island, the Clumps and West Island, uninhabited and conserved by the Sakonnet Preservation Association, where three tall stones rise like a little Stonehenge to mark the site of Newport's sumptuous "West Island Fishing Club … undoubtedly the most exclusive, as well as one of the most beautifully situated, in the United States" (The New York Times, June 23, 1892); private Watch House Beach with its grandfathered shingled bath house; the picnic rock and long beach on Sakonnet Point conserved by The Nature Conservancy; Sakonnet Lighthouse – black, white and shining – preserved by The Friends of Sakonnet Lighthouse; Narragansett Pier; the summer cottages along Newport's Cliff Walk; the Sakonnet Passage to Mt. Hope Bay; Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge; the gothic tower of St. George's Chapel in Middletown; and the Haffenreffer Wildlife Refuge, Sakonnet Point Club, Sakonnet Yacht Club, Sakonnet Lobster Co., and picturesque Sakonnet Harbor with its pleasure craft and commercial fishing fleet. A Watch House indeed. Also offered separately: Carriage House.
Carriage House (Assessors' Plat 9, Lot 400-3A99), at 43 Washington Road, like Watch House has the right to draw water from an existing private-owned public water system. and to pass on foot across a meadow to a long white-sand beach and a private picnic rock owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy. The beach and picnic rock enjoy panoramic views of Cuttyhunk, Gay Head, East Island, West Island, Sakonnet Lighthouse, Sakonnet Passage, Newport's Cliff Walk, St. George's Chapel in Middletown, and picturesque Sakonnet Harbor with its pleasure craft and commercial fishing fleet. Carriage House's 2011 property tax was just $11,373.69.
In a class by itself, Seaconnet Point Farm West is proudly offered at $8,795,000.
