portsmouthhistorynotes

If you would like to take a long and beautiful walk, try the Brown House/Glen Farm Trail. This route was developed as an Eagle Scout Project by Chace Little and is about 2.7 miles in a loop. Hikers describe it as “fairly easy, some small hills.” There is parking off of Linden Lane after the Brown House and near the entrance to the Sakonnet Greenway Trail and the kiosks for the two trails are close together. The Brown House/Glen Farm Trail is mostly paved, but there are sections over grass. The trail is not well marked so I am trying to give some visual clues as trail markers.

1. You will be walking down Linden Lane passing the polo fields and beautiful stone walls. You continue straight pass the Red Cross House where the women of Glen Farm would meet to roll bandages and support the war effort in World War II. The trail leads you to Glen Farm Road where you will turn left.
2. On your right is “The Glen” – a favorite spot to enjoy nature during the early 1800s. That is private property, but from the road you can view the mill stream. Through the years waterpower from mills ground corn, washed and pull strands of wool (carding and fulling) and even produced a course fabric called “Negro Cloth” in a factory. Up a hill and to your left is the Glen Barns complex.
3. Down Glen Farm Road you view the Gardener’s Cottage to the left and on the right by the gateposts is a house that dates from the 1700s.
4. Turn right through a cut in the stone wall to the Glen Park area. In a short distance find your way across the brook on a bridge built by another scout as his Eagle project. (Jameson Harding did the bridge and his friends did the other trail markers).
5. Walk up Barker Road through to Glen Park. There are picnic grounds here and the area is used for special events like the 4H fair. Continue south to the stalls used for the livestock and head South along the tree line.
6. Turn East with the tree line and skirt around a field that holds the foundation to the old sheep shed. Turn North with the tree line until you come to a cut in the stone wall. You will see a second kiosk for the trail. Once you have reached that, head back up the field and past the ball field until you come to the livestock stalls again.
7. Turn right down Barker Lane and retrace your steps across the bridge and out the stonewall cut to Glen Farm Road.
8. As you head back, take a right turn through the barn complex. From the 1880s to the 1950s, Gentleman Farmer H.A.C. Taylor, his son Moses Taylor and daughter-in-law Edith Taylor Nicholson raised championship horses, sheep and cows. Glen Farm was a self-sustaining farm with 25 families, its own electricity, telephone and fire department. This is still a working equestrian area, but you can carefully explore the barns. Most of the stone barns date from early 1900.
9. Follow the dirt road to the left to come back to Linden Lane at Red Cross House. This should take you back to the trailhead and parking.