Marlow

This town, a largely undisturbed agricultural community on the northern border of Cheshire County, is the prototype of a Yankee rural village. It was granted in 1753 under the name Addison, in honor of British essayist and poet Joseph Addison. Upon its incorporation in 1761, it was renamed Marlow in honor of Sir Christopher Marlow.

The village center — with its white church, old Grange, town hall and pond — is one of the region’s most picturesque and often the subject of an artist’s brush or photographer’s lens. Marlow is the site of many marks of glacial action, and minerals are still found here. A woodworking industry once used the water power of the Ashuelot River to produce tools, furniture and wooden buckets from lumber cut nearby.