Naomi Scanlon remembers standing in the doorway to the kitchen at Clough Tavern Farm as a child, dressed in her nightgown and long johns, holding her father’s hand and gathering the courage to dart across the drafty dining room to her bedroom, where she knew it would be warm.
Her parents were renting the house back in 1954, while the house they purchased up the road underwent renovations to restore running water and electricity. Decades later, in 2003, Scanlon found her way back to the Clough property with her husband, David, whose family has owned the farm since the 60s.
These days, when Scanlon stands in the same doorway, it’s the thought of luxuriating in her electric blanket that quickens her pace as she rushes to the bedroom. A draft still seeps under the door to the hallway, and many of the upgrades made to the house over time have been “put back” to the way they were, she said.
The rickety stairs, original to the house built in 1777 and delicate to navigate without knowing where to step, are cordoned off from customers who visit during the ten-day holiday pop-up shop Scanlon brings to the house each year.
For her family, the historic house, one of Canterbury’s oldest, has played host to decades of warm memories she hopes passing guests can share.
“It does seem kind of fortuitous or meant to be. I can remember always feeling comfortable here,” Scanlon said, reflecting on her childhood spent horseback riding past the farm. “We just want people to come and to leave here with a good, old-fashioned family Christmas feeling.”
In early December, as the season’s first snowstorm blanketed her fields, Scanlon shuffled around props as she prepared to welcome customers into her home. She’s hosted more than 50 local vendors each year for more than a decade — this year, a few dropped out, leaving her with 65 “A-level craftspeople,” Scanlon said, showing their wares between five rooms.
The home was transformed into an inviting holiday market with hundreds of trinkets and crafts to explore.
Wicker baskets wait for customers at the door, and at the register, where the shopping circuit ends, specialty license plates remind locals of the town’s approaching tricentennial.
Inside, one room opens into the next, each of them brimming with handcrafted knick-knacks and fragrant with patchouli and sandalwood, cedar and pine.
The security system runs on good faith. In over a decade that Scanlon has run the holiday shop, only two customers have had their checks bounce, and one returned the same night to pay in full.
“It’s the honor system, and customers and vendors have honored it,” she said.
Artisans’ names and towns are scrawled onto price tags: A display of soaps hails from Clayton’s Way Farm in Weare. Customers always enjoy potholders made by Sue Newton, a quilter based in Concord. There are leather earrings crafted in Loudon and wax candles made in Canterbury. Scanlon’s own wool acorn ornaments, made from the wool of her own Teeswater sheep and acorns foraged from her property, decorate a wiry tabletop tree.
The house glows with local creativity and the warmth of a homey holiday.
The first year Scanlon held the early-December market, people thought she was “crazy,” she said. At the time, there were virtually no craft fairs after Halloween in the area, and hers was thought to be “sacriligeous” in its proximity to Christmas.
Times have changed. In her view, the market can’t grow to be any bigger than it is now.
“We were at capacity on Friday; it wasn’t crammed, but I hope we don’t get there, where you’re just following the flow of the crowd,” she said. “You lose the personal touch.”
As the shop stands now, a temporary gem glittering in one of the capital region’s smallest towns, Scanlon is content to have the help of her daughters and grandchildren and to introduce visitors to gifts they may not have known existed, from the rare and whimsical to the utilitarian, all for sale inside the historic home.
“People seem happy when they come through, to find something special for either themselves or for someone else,” she said.
Clough Tavern Farm Christmas is open from Nov. 29 to Dec. 8 at 23 Clough Tavern Rd. in Canterbury. The shop’s hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with availability by appointment at (603) 731-5574.