Barrett House

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Barrett House, also known as Forest Hall, was built c. 1800 by Charles Barrett Sr. for his son Charles Jr. and daughter-in-law Martha Minot on the occasion of their marriage. According to tradition, its grand scale was encouraged by Martha’s father, who promised to furnish the house in as lavish a manner as Barrett Sr. could build it.

Barrett House features family furnishings, French scenic wallpaper, pristine early twentieth-century bathrooms, and a third-floor ballroom with period musical instruments. The mansion sits on more than seventy acres that include perennial and annual gardens and a Gothic Revival summer house that crowns the hillside overlooking the expansive grounds.

Visitors learn about the multiple generations that resided at Forest Hall, their lifestyles, and the impressive country estate that represents a vanished way of life from a time when New Ipswich was an active mill town.

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