Jewell Town District
The Jewell Town District in South Hampton, New Hampshire, is a small historic area along West Whitehall Road and Jewell Street, near a bend in the Powwow River. It started in 1687 when Thomas Jewell settled here and built an early industrial village powered by the river. By the early 1800s there were several mills and a bog iron works. Today the district mainly features 18th- and early 19th-century houses, with only scraps of its industrial past remaining.
The district covers about 79 acres, stretching from the state line in the west to a triangular junction of Jewell Street and Whitehall Road in the east, between two Powwow River bridges. Houses are wood-frame, mostly 1.5 to 2.5 stories, and were built before 1850 in Colonial, Federal, or Greek Revival styles. Later homes are simpler, with one early 20th-century Colonial Revival house among them.
In addition to mills, the area once had a gristmill, a fulling mill, an iron works, and later manufactured items like pails, matches, and axles. Industrial activity declined after the Salisbury Mill Company in Amesbury, Massachusetts, bought the river water rights and used them for its own mills. The Jewell Town District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 08:13 (CET).