[BITList] House on a Rock~ Sweet!

[John Feltham]

Clingstone, an unusual, 103-year-old mansion in Rhode Island's  
Narragansett Bay, survives through
the love and hard work of family and friends.





Henry Wood, the owner, runs the house like a camp: all skilled workers  
welcome.

The Jamestown Boatyard hauls the family's boats and floating dock and  
stores

them each winter in return for a week's use of the house in the summer.




Mr.  Wood, a 79-year-old Boston architect, bought the house with his  
ex-wife Joan

in 1961 for $3,600.  It had been empty for two decades.



  Clingstone had been built by a distant cousin, J.S.  Lovering  
Wharton.  Mr.  Wharton

worked with an artist, William Trost Richards, to create a house of  
picture windows

with 23 rooms on three stories radiating off a vast central hall.





  The total cost of the construction, which was completed in 1905, was

$36,982.99






  An early sketch of the house.  Mr.  Wood is as proud as any parent  
of his house,

and keeps a fat scrapbook of photographs and newspaper clippings that  
document

its best moments.  Many of the historic photos he has were provided by  
the company

that insured the house for its original owners.




The Newport Bridge is visible from the windows of the Ping-Pong room,

to the left of the fireplace.





The house is maintained by an ingenious method: the Clingstone work  
weekend.  Held

every year around Memorial Day, it brings 70 or so friends and  
Clingstone lovers

together to tackle jobs like washing all 65 of the windows.  Anne  
Tait, who is married

to Mr. Wood's son Dan, refinished the kitchen floor on one of her  
first work weekends






There are 10 bedrooms at Clingstone, all with indecently beautiful views








The dining room table seats 14.  Refinishing the chairs is a task on  
the list

for a future work weekend.








Sign by the ladder that leads to the roof reads: No entry after three  
drinks

or 86 years of age.  "It used to say 80 but we had a guy on a work  
weekend

who was 84, so I changed it," said Mr.  Wood, ever the realist.  It  
would have

been a shame to curtail the activities of a willing volunteer











   No lawn, no neighbors, no solicitors, no busy streets!





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