Historic Ipswich on the Massachusetts North Shore
This house is traditionally said to be the 2-story timber-frame home of cordwainer Philip Call constructed in 1659. Architectural historian Abbott Lowell Cummings believed that the left front rooms are a house that was constructed in the early 18th Century and was moved to the present location.
The east side of the house at 27 High St. is a one-room over-one-room floor plan, and may have been constructed by Edward Brown, who was allocated the lot in 1639 and died in 1659.
This lot was assigned to early Ipswich settler John Shatswell. The two halves of the house are separately owned, and the north side is the oldest.
The Caldwell house is believed to have been built as it appears today, a two-over-two-room house with a central chimney, after John Caldwell’s widow Sarah conveyed the property to their son, Dillingham Caldwell, on January 19, 1709.
A traditional hall and parlor First Period house, rooms inside the Thomas Lord house have large oak summer beams with wide chamfered edges, typical of houses constructed before 1680.
Posts and beams display fine beading, and there is handsome woodwork throughout the interior, indicating construction in the 2nd quarter of the 18th Century.
One of the oldest houses in Ipswich, 103 High St. has elements of a structure built by early settler William Merchant, who arrived in Ipswich in 1639. The house was replaced or greatly enlarged after Merchant died in 1668.
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