Long after its massive looms along the Lamprey River spun their final bolts of world-famous cotton and silk, the quaint riverside retreat of Newmarket continues to weave more than its fair share of history, natural beauty and old-fashioned charm.

One of New Hampshire’s earliest towns and named for its counterpart in Suffolk, England, Newmarket began as a parish of Exeter and was incorporated in 1727 at the end King George I’s reign. For more than a century, Newmarket quietly flourished through fishing, shipbuilding, lumber and agriculture. Then, in 1823, merchants from Massachusetts visited and showed interest in a nondescript sawmill along the Lamprey. The prospectors purchased not only the sawmill, but the entire downtown of Newmarket, using locally quarried granite to construct the series of immense mills that made up the Newmarket Manufacturing Company. For 106 years the Newmarket Manufacturing Company was among the region’s largest suppliers of fabric, employing one in three Newmarket residents, weaving 300,000 yards of cloth per month, and hosting a silk-weaving shed (for the linings of men’s hats, fur capes and caskets) that was once the largest room in the world. With the Great Depression sadly came the shuttering of the massive mill complex. In the decades ahead, industry came in fits and starts, from shoemakers to a tiny upstart outerwear and footwear company in the 1970s called Timberland.

Today, the mills along the Lamprey remain, several converted to upscale condominiums, with others slated for redevelopment as homes to light industry. Visitors to Newmarket will find a waterfront that time has left largely untouched, from the smiles that greet you at Marelli’s Fruit and Real Estate, which last year celebrated its 100th anniversary purveying all manner of household goodies, to the well-trod parquet of the Rockingham Ballroom, the state’s oldest continually operating dancehall, having hosted 75 years of talent from the Dorsey Brothers to Count Basie and the Artie Shaw Orchestra.

As for history, no visit to Newmarket is complete without a stop by the circa 1843 Old Stone Schoolhouse Museum, the Wentworth Cheswell cemetery (dutifully restored by local historian Rich Alperin), commemorating the state’s – and nation’s – first African American elected official, or a call to Mike Provost (603-659-5713), Newmarket’s resident host to history, to arrange an unforgettably colorful tour of the town’s mill district.

Town Facts

• Population of 9,485 (est. 2007)
• The Lamprey River, which runs through the town, takes its name from a Saxon word for “a woodland enclosure where peace is to be found.”
• Newmarket was once a center of the New England shipping trade with the West Indies.
• The summit of Bald Hill, near the town’s southwest corner, is Newmarket’s highest point, at 281 feet above sea level.
• For the past 12 years the Newmarket Heritage Festival has celebrated the arts, culture, history and community spirit rooted in this small New England mill town. The event, held each September, has grown from a one-tent festival to a full weekend of multi-cultural music and dance, artisan demonstrations, historic walking tours, narrated boat tours, kayak excursions, a model railway, hands-on children’s activities, fine arts and crafts, strolling performers, vendor booths, a classic car exhibit, and more.
• Notable residents of Newmarket have included: Emma Lenora Borden, eldest sister of Lizzie Borden (who remains notorious in American folklore); Henry Tufts, an infamous 18th century thief; U.S. Congressmen John Brodhead, George W. Kittredge and William B. Small; Runner Lynn Jennings a three-time U.S. Olympian; Grammy-nominated folk singer/songwriter Bill Morrissey.